Andrea Clearfield

Andrea Clearfield (born 1960) is an American composer of contemporary classical music. Regularly commissioned and performed by ensembles in the United States and internationally, her works include music for opera, orchestra, chorus, soloists, chamber ensembles, dance, film, and multimedia collaborations. She is represented by Black Tea Music.

Andrea Clearfield, photo by Vanessa Freire

Biography

Early life

Clearfield was born on August 29, 1960, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Bala-Cynwyd, a suburb of Philadelphia.^[1] She was raised in an artistic family and studied music from a young age, playing piano, flute and timpani and developing an interest in a broad range of genres. She began exploring composition early on, arranging pop songs for voice, strings and percussion.^[1]

Training

Clearfield attended Muhlenberg College where she met her mentor, composer Margaret Garwood.^[1] She later went on to earn a M.M. in Piano from the Philadelphia College of Performing Arts (later renamed University of the Arts), and subsequently earned a D.M.A. in composition from Temple University, where her principal teacher was Maurice Wright. She holds the distinction of being the first composer in the history of Temple University to receive the prestigious University-wide Presidential Fellowship.

Career

In addition to composing, Clearfield is active as a public speaker, curator, and visiting composer. She served on the composition and interdisciplinary arts faculty at the University of the Arts from 1986 to 2011.^[2] A strong advocate for building community around the arts, she is founder, curator, and host of the renowned Salon, featuring contemporary, classical, jazz, electronic, dance, and world music since 1986. She has served on the Grammy Board, Philadelphia Chapter and currently serves on the Board of Wildflower Composers, highlighting voices of young female, nonbinary, genderqueer, and transgender composers.

Clearfield has held composer-in-residence positions at multiple universities and conservatories, including the Yale-National University of Singapore, the Curtis Institute of Music, Emory University, Michigan State University, the University of Arkansas, The College of New Jersey, Hope College, Penn State University, Dartmouth College, University of Chicago, Indiana University, The College of William and Mary, the University of Texas at Austin, Luther College, The Hartt School of Music, and the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory St. Petersburg, Russia among others.

Compositional style

Clearfield has written more than 175 works for orchestra, opera, chorus, chamber ensemble, dance, and multimedia collaborations. Her style is lyrical and rhythmically compelling, with lush harmonies and contrasting fields of texture and sound color. Clearfield's music has its roots in a variety of cultural and artistic traditions. Among her works are seventeen cantatas including Kabo Omowale (Welcome Home, Child) commissioned and premiered by The Philadelphia Orchestra in collaboration with writer and storyteller Charlotte Blake Alston. Other works, including her choral cantata Tse Go La, are inspired by Tibetan music fieldwork that she conducted in the Nepalese Himalaya.^[3] Her opera, MILA, Great Sorcerer (Jean-Claude van Itallie and Lois Walden, libretto), which explores the life of the great Tibetan sage, Milarepa, who transformed from mass murderer into Tibet’s most venerated teacher, was presented at the acclaimed NYC Prototype Festival in 2019.^[4]

Awards and fellowships

Clearfield was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Musical Fund Society in May, 2025^[5]. She received a 2021 Pew International Residency Award,^[6] a 2016 Pew Fellowship in the Arts, two Independence Foundation Fellowships, two Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center Fellowships (2012 and 2024), and fellowships from the American Academy in Rome, Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, and Copland House, among others. Additional funders include the National Endowment for the Arts, ASCAP, the Leeway Foundation, the American Music Center (now New Music USA), the American Composers Forum, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Meet the Composer, and the International Alliance for Women in Music

Press and critical reception

Clearfield has been praised by The New York Times for her “graceful tracery and lively, rhythmically vital writing,"^[7] the Philadelphia Inquirer for her “mastery with large choral and instrumental forces,” the Los Angeles Times for her “fluid, glistening" orchestration, and by Opera News for her “vivid and galvanizing” music of “timeless beauty.”