Official site of composer Andrea Clearfield. Biography, list of works with audio, score samples, reviews and program notes, photographs, upcoming performances.
Scored for: tenor or baritone and piano Text: Rafael Campo Language: English Duration: 7:00 min. Premiere: Premiere performance featuring Michael Slattery, tenor and Thomas Bagwell, pianist
took place on May 11, 2013 at the William Way LGBT Community Center in Philadelphia Commissioned by: The AIDS Quilt Songbook Published by: Self-published, Angelfire Press
Contact Trudy Chan at Black Tea Music for score or contact Andrea Clearfield:
WATCH
Tenor Michael Slattery and pianist Thomas Bagwell perform You Bring Out the Doctor in Me from the AIDS Quilt Songbook 25th anniversary concert at National Sawdust.
REVIEW
Clearfield’s evocative setting of Rafael Campo’s piercing text absolutely stole the show [25th Anniversary of the AIDS Quilt Songbook at National Sawdust]: the typewriter-like and dramatic vocal line, the heart monitor figures in the piano that make their way throughout the piece, and Clearfield’s succinct sense of drama make this a work that needs to be experienced…
- Daniel Reza Sabzghabaei, The New York Festival of Song
“The AIDS Quilt Songbook (AQSB) is an ongoing, collaborative song cycle that had its initial premiere in Alice Tully Hall in 1992, a truly desperate time for New York and many other cities hit hard by the AIDS epidemic. The project was conceived by the late HIV-positive baritone William Parker as a way to raise money and awareness, as well as to sing songs specifically about the disease, something which had not been done in classical music before then. At that time there were no medications to fight this disease, and a feeling of hopelessness and rage infused the original collection of songs with an undeniable power.
As soon we both heard this song, with Slattery’s intense and penetrating delivery and Bagwell’s crisp and antiseptic underpinning, we both looked at each other, eyes like saucers. Clearfield’s evocative setting of Rafael Campo’s piercing text absolutely stole the show: the typewriter-like and dramatic vocal line, the heart monitor figures in the piano that make their way throughout the piece, and Clearfield’s succinct sense of drama make this a work that needs to be experienced, perhaps more than ever with the recent advent of PrEP, and the continual loss of those who lived through the AIDS epidemic firsthand: the stories from this era—and those lost to it—must be preserved, and the AQSB is helping keep these vital memories alive.”
- Daniel Reza Sabzghabaei, The New York Festival of Song
TEXT
You Bring Out the Doctor in Me
after Sandra Cisneros
You bring out the doctor in me
The smart perfume of antiseptics
The possibly unsound heart through the stethoscope
The naked under this paper drape in me.
You bring out the this won’t hurt a bit in me
The scrubs that look like pajamas
The crude anatomical diagrams
The skin is the largest organ in me.
I’d let you draw my blood
The sting of my own needles,
The cold metal of fact in me.
Test it for secret love, for HIV.
I’d die for you, to have you in me.
Just you. No latex.
Just you and me.
You bring out the health care proxy in me.
Do not resuscitate
Do not incubate me.
You bring out the chaplain praying in me.
The IV bag hanging, glassy fluids in me.
The nurse in white sneakers toileting me.
The morphine drip, the dream of you dreaming me.
Maybe I’m dying. Maybe.
You bring out the helplessness in me
The limits of knowledge in me
The inability to cry in me.
You bring out the doctor in me.
You can’t cure me: adore me.
Let me show you. Love
The only way I know how.
You Bring Out the Doctor in Me
Scored for: tenor or baritone and piano
Text: Rafael Campo
Language: English
Duration: 7:00 min.
Premiere: Premiere performance featuring Michael Slattery, tenor and Thomas Bagwell, pianist
took place on May 11, 2013 at the William Way LGBT Community Center in Philadelphia
Commissioned by: The AIDS Quilt Songbook
Published by: Self-published, Angelfire Press
Contact Trudy Chan at Black Tea Music for score or contact Andrea Clearfield:
WATCH
Tenor Michael Slattery and pianist Thomas Bagwell perform You Bring Out the Doctor in Me from the AIDS Quilt Songbook 25th anniversary concert at National Sawdust.
REVIEW
Clearfield’s evocative setting of Rafael Campo’s piercing text absolutely stole the show [25th Anniversary of the AIDS Quilt Songbook at National Sawdust]: the typewriter-like and dramatic vocal line, the heart monitor figures in the piano that make their way throughout the piece, and Clearfield’s succinct sense of drama make this a work that needs to be experienced…
- Daniel Reza Sabzghabaei, The New York Festival of Song
LISTEN
SEE preview score pages
You Bring Out the Doctor in Me excerpt
QUOTE
“The AIDS Quilt Songbook (AQSB) is an ongoing, collaborative song cycle that had its initial premiere in Alice Tully Hall in 1992, a truly desperate time for New York and many other cities hit hard by the AIDS epidemic. The project was conceived by the late HIV-positive baritone William Parker as a way to raise money and awareness, as well as to sing songs specifically about the disease, something which had not been done in classical music before then. At that time there were no medications to fight this disease, and a feeling of hopelessness and rage infused the original collection of songs with an undeniable power.
As soon we both heard this song, with Slattery’s intense and penetrating delivery and Bagwell’s crisp and antiseptic underpinning, we both looked at each other, eyes like saucers. Clearfield’s evocative setting of Rafael Campo’s piercing text absolutely stole the show: the typewriter-like and dramatic vocal line, the heart monitor figures in the piano that make their way throughout the piece, and Clearfield’s succinct sense of drama make this a work that needs to be experienced, perhaps more than ever with the recent advent of PrEP, and the continual loss of those who lived through the AIDS epidemic firsthand: the stories from this era—and those lost to it—must be preserved, and the AQSB is helping keep these vital memories alive.”
- Daniel Reza Sabzghabaei, The New York Festival of Song
TEXT
You Bring Out the Doctor in Me
after Sandra Cisneros
You bring out the doctor in me
The smart perfume of antiseptics
The possibly unsound heart through the stethoscope
The naked under this paper drape in me.
You bring out the this won’t hurt a bit in me
The scrubs that look like pajamas
The crude anatomical diagrams
The skin is the largest organ in me.
I’d let you draw my blood
The sting of my own needles,
The cold metal of fact in me.
Test it for secret love, for HIV.
I’d die for you, to have you in me.
Just you. No latex.
Just you and me.
You bring out the health care proxy in me.
Do not resuscitate
Do not incubate me.
You bring out the chaplain praying in me.
The IV bag hanging, glassy fluids in me.
The nurse in white sneakers toileting me.
The morphine drip, the dream of you dreaming me.
Maybe I’m dying. Maybe.
You bring out the helplessness in me
The limits of knowledge in me
The inability to cry in me.
You bring out the doctor in me.
You can’t cure me: adore me.
Let me show you. Love
The only way I know how.
-Rafael Campo