Andrea Clearfield
Music
Philadelphia, PA
Andrea Clearfield is an award-winning composer of music for orchestra, opera, chorus, 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”. Her works are performed widely in the U.S. and abroad. Among her 150 works are eleven large-scale cantatas including one commissioned and premiered by The Philadelphia Orchestra. Recent works are inspired by Tibetan music fieldwork that she conducted in the Nepalese Himalaya. Her first opera, on the 11th Century Tibetan saint Milarepa, MILA, Great Sorcerer was presented at the acclaimed NYC Prototype Festival in January 2019. She was appointed the Steven R. Gerber Composer in Residence with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia for their 2018-19 season. She is 2020 Composer-in-Residence with National Concerts at Carnegie Hall. Dr. Clearfield was awarded a 2017 Independence Foundation Fellowship, a 2016 Pew Fellowship in the Arts and fellowships at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, American Academy in Rome, Yaddo, Ucross, Wurlitzer Foundation, Ragdale, Copland House and the MacDowell Colony among others. Her music is published by Boosey & Hawkes, G. Schirmer, Hal Leonard, and Seeadot and recorded on the Bridge, Sony, MSR, Albany, Crystal, and Innova labels. She received a doctorate in composition from Temple University where she was awarded the Presidential Fellowship, was a two-time winner of the Heller Award for Excellence in Composition, and was honored as a distinguished alumna. She served on the Composition and Interdisciplinary Arts faculty at The University of the Arts from 1986 – 2011. Passionate for building community around the arts, she is founder and host of the renowned Salon featuring contemporary, classical, jazz, electronic, dance, and world music since 1986. She sits on the Board of Directors of the Recording Academy/Grammy’s.