Andrea Clearfield

Andrea Clearfield is an award-winning composer of music for chorus, orchestra, opera, chamber ensemble, dance, and multimedia collaborations. Clearfield creates deep, emotive musical languages that build cultural and artistic bridges. She has been praised by the New York Times for her “graceful tracery and lively, rhythmically vital writing”, the Philadelphia Inquirer for her “compositional wizardry” and “mastery with large choral and instrumental forces”, the L.A. Times for her “fluid and glistening orchestration” and by Opera News for her “vivid and galvanizing” music of “timeless beauty”. She was appointed the Steven R. Gerber Composer in Residence with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, Dirk Brossé, Artistic Director for their 2018-19 season. She is 2020-2022 Composer-in-residence with National Concerts at Carnegie Hall. Her works are performed widely in the U.S. and abroad. Among her 160 works are 13 large-scale cantatas including Kabo Omowale, commissioned by The Philadelphia Orchestra. Her cantata, Tse Go La, for double chorus, electronics and chamber orchestra is inspired by her music fieldwork documenting Tibetan melodies in the Himalayas. Lung-Ta (The Windhorse) was presented as a gift to His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama as an initiative for world peace.

Andrea was a 2020 recipient of the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage International Artist Residency, was named the 2020 The David Del Tredici Residency Fellow at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, NY and was awarded a 2020 Helene Wurlitzer Foundation Fellowship in Taos, NM. She has been commissioned by The Mendelssohn Club to write a large-scale work funded by the NEA for chorus and percussion to libretto by Ellen Frankel for November, 2021 premiere, and a new work for chorus and orchestra for the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque for December, 2021 premiere.
 
Her first opera, Mila, Great Sorcerer, to libretto by Jean-Claude van Itallie and Lois Walden, was presented at the acclaimed NYC Prototype Festival in January, 2019. Hailed by the press as “mystical and dramatically compelling”, “a colorful, expressive score”, “lush and rich”, “a sonic exultation with lasting power”, “successfully delivers its redemptive message”, “highly recommended” and “the most accomplished and mature of this year’s compositions”, the opera was commissioned and produced by Gene Kaufman and Terry Eder and directed by Kevin Newbury.
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She is a recipient of a 2017 Independence Foundation Fellowship in the Arts, a 2016 Pew Fellowship and was awarded fellowships at the American Academy in Rome, the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Ucross, Blue Mountain Center, Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, Djerassi, Montalvo, Civitella Ranieri, Ragdale, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Copland House among others. She was keyboardist with the Relâche Ensemble for 25 years and was honored to have been invited to perform with the Court of the Dalai Lama. She has been invited as visiting composer to numerous universities and colleges including Yale-National University of Singapore, Curtis Institute of Music, University of Texas at Austin, Emory University, Indiana University, University of Chicago, College of William and Mary, Michigan State, University of Arkansas and the Rimsky Korsakov Conservatory in St. Petersburg, Russia. Clearfield is in demand as a curator, adjudicator, speaker and concert host. She has served on the Board of Directors of the Recording Academy (Grammy’s) Philadelphia Chapter and is currently on the Board of the Young Womens Composers Camp. Her music is published by Boosey & Hawkes, G. Schirmer, Hal Leonard and Seeadot. Dr. Clearfield served on the composition faculty at The University of the Arts from 1986 – 2011. She received a DMA from Temple University where she was awarded the University-wide Presidential Fellowship and was honored as a Distinguished Alumna. A passionate advocate for building community around the arts, she is also the founder and host of the renowned Salon (now online ZALON) featuring contemporary, classical, jazz, electronic, dance and world music since 1986 and winner of Philadelphia Magazine’s “Best of Philadelphia” award.