Consortium
Featured Artists
Below are the very talented artists who are either in Consortium as composition members or recently worked with the group. Please take some time to learn more about them, their work, or visit their websites!
J. M. Lee - Board
Composer
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Luke Tackett - Board
Composer
Grant Hesselink
Composer
Drew Flemming
Composer
Brodie Spolar
Visual Artist
Not Pictured
Charlotte Gutzmer - Poet
Alex Lindemann - Visual Artist
Sam Tackett - Visual Artist
Maren Bulovsky - Visual Artist
Composer's Biography's
Y A K I
Jacob “Yaki” Hallett, born and raised in Waukesha, Wisconsin, and graduated as a music composition major at UWEC with a piano emphasis in 2023. He studied music composition with Dr. Chia-Yu Hsu, and piano with Dr. Namji Kim at the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire. The repertoire he studied had a great influence on his music, especially impressionism.
In 2021, he founded the local music composition group “Consortium” and currently works with the “Consortium Ensemble” which was founded by J. M. Lee in 2023. The group's goals are to support local artists and composers through collaborations and interdisciplinary projects. One of the annual events titled "Culmination" puts on an interdisciplinary event of collaborations with multiple disciplines like new music, visual art, and poetry.
He loves to collaborate with other artists of various mediums and is always looking for projects to work on. Especially exploring the crossover of the combined artistic expression. Yaki also gets a great deal of inspiration from nature and loves to tell stories of nature through his music. He believes that the more senses that can be involved, the stronger the connection, experience, and conversation.
J. M. Lee
J.M. Lee is a contemporary classical composer, based in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. He earned his undergraduate degree in Music Composition from the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire in December of 2023, and is planning on attending SUNY Binghamton in the Fall of 2025 to pursue a Masters' of Music in Music Composition. He has had the pleasure of working in and with Consortium, and is very excited to be here for the fourth installment of Culmination!
Luke Tackett
Luke Tackett is currently a senior in his final semester studying music composition at UW-Eau Claire. He began his musical life in Monroe, Wisconsin, taking piano lessons at the age of six. After moving to Pewaukee, he joined his school's band in 5th grade as a saxophonist, and has since picked up clarinet, flute, mellophone, and bassoon along with singing in choir. Luke began considering composition as a career path during high school, where he composed and rehearsed an original piece for the school's symphonic band. Since then, Luke has composed numerous other works for soloists/small ensembles including solo piano, brass quintets, woodwind quintets, saxophone quartets, string quartets, percussion ensembles, vocal ensembles, jazz combos, and mixed groups, as well as several electronic compositions. He has also composed three additional large ensemble pieces, one of which was performed by UW-Eau Claire’s Symphony Orchestra in 2024 after winning the Concerto Competition, and the latest being a three-movement band piece for UWEC’s Wind Symphony. His style is very melody-focused and takes much inspiration from video game soundtracks and Romantic-present day classical music. During college, Luke has performed in several ensembles including University Band, Marching Band, Jazz III, Jazz Combo, Contemporary Ensemble, and Symphony Band, and has also taken lessons for both piano and bassoon. Outside of music, Luke enjoys hiking, biking, cooking and eating good food, creating art, and playing video games.
Grant Hesselink
I am about to graduate with a BFA in Music Composition and Applied Mathematics from UW-Eau Claire. I like to experiment with my compositions, so in most of my works, you'll see at least one technique that is outside the box. I am interested in both electronic music and live music, and aspire to write for media in the future, as well as go to graduate school for Musicology or Music Theory. Some composers that have influenced my writing the most are Igor Stravinsky, Leonard Bernstein, Béla Bartók, Claude Debussy, Henry Cowell, and many others.
Lorelei "Link" Sanders
Hello! I'm a 4th year composition major at UWEC. I'm currently 22 years old. I'm a huge dork and love comics, cartoons, and video games, especially The Legend of Zelda. Music has been a passion of mine for a long time, and I've known that I've wanted to make a career out of it since near the beginning of my musical journey. I take inspiration from a lot of different games that I've played and the musical styles that they have. I LOVE electronic music and can't wait to get more into it. When it comes to my style, I just write what comes to me. I have a lot of "go with the flow" moments, and I don't like to stick to only one genre.