McKayla Phillips is a percussionist and educator based out of Greensboro, North Carolina. She is currently the Instructor of Percussion at Shaw University in Raleigh, NC, as well as the Assistant Band Director and Front Ensemble Director at Northwest Guilford Middle and High School in Oak Ridge, NC.
McKayla has been a guest clinician at universities, high schools, and summer workshops across the country, and has participated in numerous performances at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention. McKayla earned a Master of Music degree from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and received her Bachelor of Music Education and Bachelor of Music Performance degrees from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She is a member of the Percussive Arts Society, NAfME, NCAE, College Music Society, Pi Kappa Lambda National Music Honor Society, and serves on the PAS Education Committee and PAS Diversity Alliance.
An avid proponent of new music, she has recently premiered and/or commissioned works by Annika Socolofsky, Nick Werth, Russell Wharton, Von Hansen, Ivan Trevino, Michael Burritt, Robert Honstein, Katherine Bodor, Rob Rankin, and Isaac Pyatt. McKayla has performed at the 2019 Percussive Arts Society International Convention (PASIC) with her Indiana based chamber group, InBloom Percussion, the 2018 Indiana University Percussion Ensemble, the 2015 PAS All-Star Ensemble, and the 2015 UNCG Percussion Ensemble. She is a founding member of the contemporary percussion trio Conduit Percussion, where she serves as outreach coordinator. Conduit Percussion's most recent clinic tour "Making Musical Decisions: the Percussionist's Perspective" visited various high schools and venues across North Carolina. McKayla has also performed with the Fayetteville Symphony Orchestra and the Greensboro Opera.
Her teachers have included Joseph Gramley, Steve Houghton, Kevin Bobo, Michael Spiro, John Tafoya, Joe Galvin, Eric Willie, Neeraj Mehta, Kristopher Keeton, Peter Zlotnick, Naomi Marcus, and Christopher Fosnaugh.
McKayla Phillips proudly endorses Black Swamp Percussion and Innovative Percussion.