The Austin Percussion Collective (APC) is a percussion chamber group that represents the thriving percussion scene in Austin, TX. Abundant with local percussionists and composers, APC is actively championing new percussion music in Austin’s live music scene.
The Austin Percussion Collective’s roster features local freelancers, educators, composers, students, and collegiate faculty. Having sold out local Austin venues such as Monk’s Jazz Club, APC is actively unraveling the possibilities of a vibrant percussion scene, supported by an interwoven ecosystem of composers, performers, and teachers.
The Austin Percussion Collective was founded in 2023 and is directed by Dan Hartung, Sebastian Zhang, and Lauren Molloy.
Dan Hartung founder, artistic director
Dan Hartung is a percussionist and educator in the Tampa Bay area. He is the Percussion Director at the Tarpon Springs Leadership Conservatory for the Arts and the founder and artistic director of the Austin Percussion Collective (APC), an organization that has created a network of over 40 local percussion educators, freelancers, composers, students, and professors in Austin, TX.
Dan has a longstanding commitment to commissioning new music. Since 2017, he has commissioned over 20 new works by composers including Ian Whillock, Darian Thomas, Sophie Mathieu, Ivan Trevino, and Louis Raymond-Kolker. As an active performer, he has served as principal percussionist for The Orchestra San Antonio, Opera San Antonio, Ballet San Antonio, and the Classical Music Institute Orchestra for the Andrea Bocelli World Tour in 2023.
Dan is also passionate about studying Afro-Diasporic percussion. He studies batá, güiro, and rumba in Havana and Matanzas, Cuba with renowned musicians Octavio Rodríguez Rivera, Miguel Bernal, Michel Aldalma, Miguelito León, and members of the Latin Grammy Award winning Los Muñequitos de Matanzas. Additionally, he has performed with Tambores del Pueblo, an Afro-Puerto Rican Bomba group, the Austin West African Drum and Dance Company, and has participated in Afro-Venezuelan Tambor celebrations with San Juan New York City and San Juan USA.
Dan has earned degrees from the University of Texas at Austin (D.M.A.), Michigan State University (M.M.) and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (B.M.E.). He has been fortunate to study with some of the foremost collegiate educators including Dave Hall, Gwen Dease, Jon Weber, Kevin “Bujo” Jones, Ivan Trevino, Richard Huntley, and Tom Burritt. Dan is an endorsing education artist for Vic Firth sticks and mallets and Zildjian cymbals.
Sebastian Zhang co-founder, co-artistic director
Unapologetically embracing the electric nostalgia of a younger generation, Sebastian Zhang (b. 2003) is a composer-percussionist influenced by the modern chiptune scene, upbeat video game riffs, math-rock melodies, and jazz fusion. His music draws upon scenes of everyday life—from chasing tadpoles to memories of cartoon ice cream—and how they echo grander themes of merry wonder and existentialist hope.
Sebastian’s music has been performed by organizations including Sandbox Percussion, the Living Earth Show, the the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Michigan, Matchstick Percussion, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. His music has been performed across the United States at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention (PASIC), the Round Top Festival Institute, the National Conference on Percussion Pedagogy (NCPP), the Great Plains International Marimba Competition (GPIMC) and broadcast on Kansas Public Radio’s KANU 91.5 FM. Several of his works appear on the Texas UIL Prescribed Music List (PML) and the Missouri MSHSAA PML.
Sebastian holds a BM in Music Studies from the University of Texas at Austin, studying under Ivan Trevino, Omar Thomas, Yevgeniy Sharlat, and Thomas Burritt. In Fall 2025, he will begin an MM in Music Composition at the Yale School of Music.
Lauren Molloy co-artistic director
Lauren Molloy is a performer, music theorist, and educator based in Austin, TX dedicated to the proliferation and access of the percussive art form. Throughout her career, she has prioritized playing in groups with strong and direct ties to their community, performing with ensembles such as the Philharmonia of Greater Kansas City, Free State Brass Band, Kansas City-based vocal ensemble Ignea Strata, and the Inside Out Community Steelband of Austin, Texas. She regularly collaborates with and commissions composers both as a soloist and as a member of Larkspur Percussion Duo and 2022 Avaloch Institute artists-in-residence, the LNK Percussion Collective. In 2024, she performed and presented at the National Society of Steelband Educators conference in Austin, Texas as a member of Larkspur Percussion duo, discussing the importance of access to and growth of accessible steelpan repertoire in secondary school and beyond.
Lauren can be heard playing steelpan on Jonathan Scales Fourchestra’s EP Mindstate Music, as well as Obsidian, White Tea & Ginger by Louis Raymond-Kolker. She currently holds degrees from the University of Kansas in Percussion and Music Theory and is pursuing a degree in Music Theory at the Butler School of Music at the University of Texas at Austin where her primary research focus is the construction and negotiation of girlhood and female identities within popular music.