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 abroad, her works include music for orchestra, chorus, soloists, chamber ensembles, dance, opera, film, and multimedia collaborations.

Clearfield was born on August 29, 1960, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Bala-Cynwyd, a suburb of Philadelphia.

She was raised in an artistic family and began studying music at 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 from the radio for voices, strings and percussion.

Clearfield met her mentor, composer Margaret Garwood, who was teaching at Muhlenberg College during the time Clearfield was a student there.

She later went on to earn a M.M. in Piano from the Philadelphia College of Performing Arts (now the University of the Arts), and subsequently received a D.M.A. in composition from Temple University, where her principal teacher was Maurice Wright.

She served on the composition and interdisciplinary arts faculty at The University of the Arts from 1986 to 2011.

Since 1986, Clearfield has been the founder and host of the Salon concert series in Philadelphia, featuring contemporary, classical, jazz, world, folk, rock, and electronic music alongside dance, spoken word, and multimedia art forms.

She curates these events, which have become a meeting place for musicians of diverse styles, in Philadelphia and around the US.

Clearfield writes in a wide range of genres encompassing opera, orchestral, choral, chamber, dance, and multimedia, including a number of large-scale cantatas.

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 backgrounds.

One of her major cantatas, Women of Valor, based on the women of the Bible, incorporates the poetry of contemporary women writers, while another, The Golem Psalms, takes its inspiration from the legend of the Golem of Prague.

Much of Clearfield's work is influenced by ancient Tibetan music, folklore, and culture, including her opera MILA, Great Sorcerer.

Commissioned by Orchestra 2001

Commissioned by the Anna Crusis Women’s Choir in celebration of their 30 Year Anniversary

In her 2012 cantata, Tse Go La (At the threshold of this life), she included Tibetan melodies gathered during her travels to northern Nepal, which she undertook to record and preserve the region's indigenous music.

Clearfield has been the recipient of many awards, fellowships, and residencies throughout her career, including the NEA, ASCAP, Leeway Foundation, American Music Center, American Composers Forum, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Meet the Composer, and the International Alliance for Women in Music.

She was the featured composer at the 2014 Women Composers Festival of Hartford.

Clearfield's prolific output for vocal, orchestral, chamber, and other genres is published by Boosey & Hawkes, See-A-Dot, G. Schirmer, Jomar Press and International Opus.

Her works have been recorded by MSR Classics, Crystal Records, Innova, 2L Norwegian, Albany, and Centaur labels.

She has also received a 2016 Pew Fellowship in the Arts and a 2020 Pew International Residency Award, two Independence Foundation Fellowships, and residencies at The Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center, American Academy in Rome, Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, Ucross, The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, Copland House, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and the Lucas Artist Residency at Montalvo Arts Center.

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.