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

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

Andrea’s SZALON celebrated its 38-Year Anniversary on September 29th with 11 superb ensembles. The next Szalon is on November 24th. Join us live or online! Program and how to join 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 seventeen 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 was also 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 and more. Andrea served two terms on the Board of the Grammy’s, Philadelphia Chapter and currently serves on the Executive Board of Wildflower Composers.

Andrea was awarded a 2025 Yaddo Fellowship and Marble House Project Residency. She was also awarded a February, 2024 Composer Fellowship at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, Lake Como, Italy where she wrote Part 1 of an evening-length cantata, “Long Live the Queen (a her-story of drag)” in collaboration with librettist, drag soloist and costume designer, Cookie Diorio. Part I was premiered presented by the Philadelphia Gay Men’s Chorus on May 17 and 18 at Suzanne Roberts Theater in Philadelphia, with subsequent performances at the June Rockefeller Pride 2024 event NYC and the July GALA Festival in Minneapolis. This summer her work “Rise” for horn and piano was premiered at the International Horn Symposium in Fort Collins, CO. Andrea was Visiting Composer at University of Michigan in early July and will be visiting composer at Rutgers University and The College of New Jersey this fall.

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. November 17th was the NYC premiere of her cantata Beyond the Binary. Read the article in Broadway World here. Andrea has had 16 world premieres of her music in the past two 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. Three Songs for Violin and Bass was performed on the New Milestones series at Lincoln Center.

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. Find out more and get your copy of the score. The cantata will have its NYC premiere with the Stonewall Chorale in NYC on March 23, 2024, and will a be a featured work at the GALA festival in Minneapolis on July 12, 2024.

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.

Andrea started a ZALON to continue the tradition online, support artists and help keep the arts alive. The 36-Year Season began a new hybrid model- the 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, who commissioned the work, in Austin on February 21, 2020.

Recent 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.