Music at home: Women-focused new music ensemble performs online during pandemic

Not only did the ensemble grow quickly, but within just nine months of its inception, Sackleh raised enough funds to rent the Woodward Theater in Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine district for New Downbeat’s inaugural concert in January 2020. The next big project that Sackleh has in mind for the group is the premiere of a large-scale work commissioned in honor of the 2021 International Women’s Day.

While most live performances have been cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic, New Downbeat fulfills its mission by commissioning and performing short works in at-home concerts, then sharing the videos online as its 2020-21 virtual season. Each of the composers working with New Downbeat were asked to compose three miniature works (usually less than five minutes long) for either solo performers or very small ensembles.

One such work is by current DMA student in composition and New Downbeat member Nicolas Bizub (MM Composition, ’18). He wrote “Bright Unrest 1” for solo cello, which was premiered by Sarah Huesman (MM Cello Performance, ’20) earlier this month. With his three works for New Downbeat, Bizub is trying to musically capture the deep unease that this time is inspiring in everyone.

“With each work I seek to capture not only the sense of deep unrest imbued in this moment, but also the possibility for truly positive change because of this moment,” Bizub says. “In Bright Unrest 1, I sought to capture the mercurial nature of experiencing hope within a dire situation, just like many of us are experiencing during the pandemic.”

The creation of new musical works, especially those for a particular soloist, is often a collaborative effort between composer and performer. Bizub says that technologies like Zoom make that collaboration possible despite distance but there’s another aspect of his work that Bizub misses more.

“Composing is an interesting cyclic sort of feedback loop — composers write a piece, performers interpret that piece and perform it for an audience, and the audience then gives feedback to both the performer and the composer,” he adds. “But because the audience is absent from this feedback loop, I am feeling like I don’t really yet know how, not just this piece, but all the other works I’ve written in quarantine are being received. That leaves me feeling a bit lost.”