Official site of composer Andrea Clearfield. Biography, list of works with audio, score samples, reviews and program notes, photographs, upcoming performances.

For commissions, perusal scores, residencies, teaching, rentals and sales contact Trudy Chan at Black Tea Music.

Andrea will be presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Musical Fund Society on May 20th, 2025. Her new string quartet, if each day falls inside each night, commissioned by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, will be performed by the Erinys Quartet that evening. Tickets and info here.

Join us at the last Szalon of the season on May 18th! For the program and how to join, visit the Szalon’s website here.

Creating deep, emotive musical languages that build cultural and artistic bridges, the music of Andrea Clearfield is performed widely in the U.S. and abroad. Her 175 works include an opera and 17 large-scale cantatas; one commissioned and premiered by The Philadelphia Orchestra. She is a recipient of numerous awards including a 2016 Pew Fellowship, a 2021 Pew Center International Residency Award, two Independence Foundation Fellowships, two Leeway Foundation Fellowships, two Rockefeller Bellagio Center Fellowships and a William Penn Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome. She has also been awarded fellowships at Yaddo, MacDowell, Ucross, Civitella, Montalvo, Blue Mountain Center, Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Copland House among others. She was awarded the Haslam Distinguished Residency at the University of Tennessee in February, 2026. Andrea served two terms on the Board of the Grammy’s, Philadelphia Chapter and currently serves on the Executive Board of Wildflower Composers.She was awarded a composer residency at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs this March/April to work on new commissions.

Clearfield’s current commissions include: Long Live the Queen (a her-story of drag) (Cookie Diorio, librettist), for ArtPhilly 2026; Duo for Symphony & Stix featuring West Powelton Drumline (aka Sixers Stixers) and Main Line Symphony, for Musicopia; if each day falls inside each night (string quartet) for the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society and new works for the Canadian Guitar Quartet; Benjamin Pierce (Euphonium/Piano); Kenneth Tse (Saxophone/Piano); and the University of Tennessee (Oboe, Horn, Piano).

Her cantata, Here I Am: I Am Here will be performed at Carnegie Hall on June 28, 2026 with Clearfield narrating, under the direction of Colt. B. Ballou. Andrea was selected to be a curator of the ArtPhilly 2026 Citywide arts festival responding to the nation’s 250th Anniversary with the theme “What now”. She was awarded 2025 Yaddo and Marble House Project Fellowships, and a 2026 Visby International Centre for Comoposers Fellowship in Sweden, and will be Visiting Composer at The College of New Jersey in April, 2025. She was awarded a February, 2024 Composer Fellowship at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, Lake Como, Italy where she wrote Part 1 of an hour-long cantata, Long Live the Queen (a her-story of drag) in collaboration with librettist and drag soloist, Cookie Diorio. Part I was premiered presented by the Philadelphia Gay Men’s Chorus at the Suzanne Roberts Theater in Philadelphia, with subsequent performances at Rockefeller Pride 2024 NYC and the GALA Festival in Minneapolis. “Rise” for horn and piano was premiered at the 2024 International Horn Symposium in Fort Collins, CO. Andrea was Visiting Composer at University of Michigan in 2024

She was awarded a 2023 composer fellowships at the Visby International Centre for Composers in Sweden where she was the recipient of a Swedish Arts Grant for intercultural exchange. Her cantata Beyond the Binary had its NYC premiere last fall. Read the article in Broadway World here. Andrea has had 17 other world premieres of her music in the past three years, including HERE I AM:I AM HERE, Standing at the Beam, When we listen, Transformed by Fire Choral Suite, Beyond the Binary, Let Us Remember Spring, Where Everything is Music, Reflections on the Dranyen, Pan with Us (world premiere arrangement from Fire and Ice cantata, begin at 0:00), Singing into Presence (begin at 16:00), Home in Me,A Brush With Our Time and Smile Thy Shores for vocal octet and cello, commissioned by The Presser Foundation.

Andrea was commissioned to write the music and libretto for Here I Am: I Am Here for Coro Allegro’s Letters To Our Children Project. David Hodgkins, Artistic Director of Coro Allegro, wrote: “More and more, Andrea has been tackling issues involving the LGBTQ+ communities, and her thoughtfulness and perceptiveness is just what is needed as we all embrace – and celebrate – all of the nuanced challenges that are before us these days. For the messaging to be heard, the music conveying that message must be superb, and Andrea delivers that and more. It is clear that in our current world, musical integrity and issues of social justice can intertwine to give voice to those who have been previously silenced.”Watch a rehearsal clip of the piece. The cantata had its NYC premiere with the Stonewall Chorale in NYC on March 23, 2024, and was a featured work at the GALA festival in Minneapolis on July 12, 2024. It will be performed at Carnegie Hall on May 9, 2026.

Reflections on the Dranyen for classical guitar, commissioned and premiered by renowned classical guitarist William Kanengiser, was selected as the required piece for the Guitar Foundation of America’s 2022 International Competition. Watch the semi finals and the finals here. Purchase the work here. Learn about the work here.

Andrea was composer-in-residence at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity August-September, 2022 Leighton Studios as a winner of the Pew Foundation International Residency Award. She was Composer-in-residence at the University of New Mexico in May, 2022 for the World Premiere of Singing into Presence commissioned by UNM for their chorus and orchestra and set to poetry by Kitty O’Meara on the theme of the pandemic, and the New Mexico premiere of “Pan with Us” from her Fire and Ice cantata. Watch the concert here. Info here. She was visiting composer at Michigan State University Spring, 2022 for the premiere of Standing at the Beam, to poetry by Anthony Silvestri. The work, commissioned by MSU, honors the resilience and courage of those who have suffered sexual abuse. Andrea’s cantata, Beyond the Binary, commissioned by Mendelssohn Chorus, Dominick DiOrio, director was premiered on May 15, 2022 at the Fillmore, Philadelphia. Read a feature story by Peter Crimmins on WHYY here.BEYOND THE BINARY (a meditation on humans and machines) is set to libretto by Ellen Frankel with custom built instruments by David Kontak. A quasi-sequel to Karel Čapek’s Rossum’s Universal Robots, the work celebrates the 100 year anniversary of the word robot and explores what it may means to move beyond a binary way of thinking.

Andrea was featured composer with the San Antonio Chamber Choir and Cardinal Singers. Concerts of her Tse Go La cantata took place on February 26-27. Info here. Tse Go La was also featured at the Orlando Sings Festival on June 9th, 2022. Info here.

A strong advocate for creating vital, alternative arts spaces that build community, Andrea founded her renowned Salon in 1986. “One of the best-known music salons in the country” with a “deep bench of topflight musicians”, “an underground sensation” (The Philadelphia Inquirer), “one of Philadelphia’s hidden gems” (Temple News) and winner of the “Best of Philly Award 2008” (Philadelphia Magazine), the Salon has become a beloved event, sparking a large and growing community around the arts in Philadelphia and beyond. She started Salons in Aspen, Scottsdale, NY and Main Line Reform Temple, National Museum of American Jewish History and the Interfaith Center of Philadelphia among others.

Her ZALON was created at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic to continue the tradition online, support artists and help keep the arts alive. The 36-Year Season began a new hybrid model- the hybrid SZALON – to connect the communities far and wide with “live” and remote performances streamed in and out with the help of a fabulous tech team, Adam Vidiksis, technical director, Gerardo Razumney, lead engineer. Learn more here. Logo by Mia Bosna.

Prayer to the Shechinah” was premiered by the Grammy-award winning Conspirare chorus, that commissioned the work, in Austin on February 21, 2020.

A number of her works are inspired by Tibetan music fieldwork that she conducted in a northern Himalayan region of Nepal to help preserve this musical heritage. Her first opera, MILA, Great Sorcerer, with libretto by Jean Claude van Itallie and Lois Walden, was premiered in a semi-staged production at the acclaimed Prototype Festival in January, 2019 at Gerald Lynch Theater in NYC. Praised by the press as “mystical and dramatically compelling”, “deeply moving and successful premiere”, “highly recommended”, “colorful, expressive score”, “lush and rich”, “a sonic exultation with lasting power”, “successfully delivers its redemptive message”, “the most accomplished and mature of this year’s compositions”, the opera was commissioned by Gene Kaufman and Terry Eder. Read the feature stories in the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Tricycle Magazine. The opera is on the life of the great Tibetan sage, Milarepa, who transformed from mass murderer into Tibet’s most venerated teacher. Lung-Ta (The Windhorse) was presented to His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama as an initiative for world peace and Tse Go La cantata has been performed internationally.