Andrea Clearfield
Classical music composer and host of the zaloN
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. 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”.
She has written 175 works for opera, chorus, orchestra, chamber ensemble, dance and multimedia including 17 cantatas exploring themes from gender and identity, LGBTQ+ families, the role of drag in community, freedom and oppression, healing from sexual abuse, environmental sustainability and health. Her new string quartet for the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society was premiered on May 11, 2025.
She is currently working on Long Live the Queen (a her-story of drag), a 90 min. cantata/opera with librettist/drag artist Cookie Diorio, Symphony & Stix for symphony orchestra and drumline commissioned by Musicopia to celebrate their 50 Year Anniversary, a classical guitar quartet for the Canadian Guitar Quartet on mitigating climate change. Kabo Omowale, with renowned storyteller/librettist Charlotte Blake Alston, was commissioned and premiered by The Philadelphia Orchestra. Documenting Tibetan music in the Nepalese Himalaya inspired a decade of new work including Lung-Ta, presented to the Dalai Lama as an initiative for world peace, Tse Go La cantata for double chorus and chamber orchestra on rites of passage, and MILA, Great Sorcerer, opera to libretto by Jean-Claude van Itallie and Lois Walden on the transformative story of Tibetan saint Milarepa, presented by the acclaimed NYC Prototype Festival. She has been awarded a Pew Center International Residency Award, a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, two Independence Foundation Fellowships, two Fellowships at the Rockefeller’s Bellagio Center and Fellowships at the American Academy in Rome, MacDowell, Yaddo, Copland House, Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico among others. She is active as a public speaker and visiting composer.
Dr. Clearfield served on the Composition Faculty at The University of the Arts from 1986-2011. As a pianist, she performed with the Relâche Ensemble for 25 years and held the honor of performing with the Court of the Dalai Lama. Passionate about creating community around arts, she founded and hosts her Salon since 1986, featuring a diverse programming and winner of the Best of Philadelphia award. She has served two terms on the Grammy Board of Directors, Philadelphia Chapter, and currently serves on the Executive Board of Wildflower Composers, highlighting voices of young female, nonbinary, genderqueer and transgender composers. Dr. Clearfield was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Musical Fund Society in May, 2025.
She is represented by Trudy Chan at Black Tea Music.
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