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.

The Szalon celebrates 40 Years! Join us for the 40-Year Celebration on September 27th! Program and info to join in person in center city Philadelphia or online will be posted soon here.

Andrea’s cantata on stories of transgender youth and surviving conversion therapy, Here I Am: I Am Here had its Utah premiere under the direction of Austin Thorpe with the Utah Choir Project on January 31st. It had its Canada premiere under the direction of Chris Fischer on February 22 at First-St. Andrew’s United Church in London, Ontario. Upcoming will be its TTBB premiere with the Empire City Men’s Chorus in NYC under the direction of Vince Petersen on June 12 and 14, and its Nebraska premiere with the Star City Chorus on April 17.

Conductor quotes:
“Andrea Clearfield’s Here I Am: I Am Here is one of the great modern contributions to choral music. The inspiring, yet heart wrenching compilation of texts and messages are real, timeless, and artistically invigorating with ample harmonic and melodic drama to tell this incredible story.”
— Austin Thorpe, Ph.D., Director of Utah Choir Project

“The experience of working with Andrea was extraordinary. Her artistic standards are impeccable. It is clear that she crafts music of the highest order, but it is the union of the music and the messaging that makes Andrea’s music so powerful. 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. Andrea is that rare combination of brilliant artist, empathetic listener, and thoughtful communicator whose compositions can bring those marginalized voices to life.”
— David Hodgkins, Artistic Director, Coro Allegro

Andrea was recently awarded composer fellowships at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Ragdale Foundation, Marble House Project and Yaddo working on Long Live the Queen (a her-story of drag), a 90 min. work for drag soloist, vocal quartet, 4 choirs and chamber orchestra in collaboration with drag artist and librettist Cookie Diorio. The work premieres at ArtPhilly’s WhatNow 2026 Festival at the Wilma Theater June 18,19, 20, with a preview performance at Theatre Exile on April 30th, 7pm. Purchase tickets here. Other commissions include a classical guitar quartet for the Canadian Guitar Quartet, a trio for horn, oboe and piano with dancers celebrating interdisciplinary arts at the University of Tennessee where she was awarded the 2027 Haslam Distinguished Residency, and a chamber work for flute, pianoforte and strings for Night Music directed by Steven Zohn and Heather Miller Lardin . Her DUO for Symphony & Stix, commissioned by Musicopia, was premiered with the West Powelton Drumline and Main Line Symphony Orchestra on May 31, 2025 with subsequent performances on April 24 and 26, 2026. Clearfield was awarded 2026 composer residencies at Ragdale, the Virginia Center for the Performing Arts and the Visby International Centre for Composers in Sweden. Her recent string quartet, if each day falls inside each night, commissioned by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, was premiered by the Erinys Quartet on May 11, 2025. Her arrangement of the work for string orchestra for North/South Consonance premiered on January 12, 2026 at St. Stephen’s Church in NYC. Andrea was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Musical Fund Society, the oldest music organization in the nation, on May 20, 2025.

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, American Academy in Rome, Ucross, Civitella, Montalvo, Blue Mountain Center and Copland House among others. She was awarded 2025 composer residencies at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, NY and Marble House Project in Dorset, VT. She is honored to be the recipient of the Haslam Distinguished Residency at the University of Tennessee in 2027. Andrea served two terms on the Board of the Grammy’s, Philadelphia Chapter and currently serves on the Executive Board of Wildflower Composers, supporting young female, transgender, nonbinary and genderqueer composers. Her music is published by Angelfire Press and represented by Black Tea Music, publishing agent, and is distributed worldwide in collaboration with Just A Theory Press. Additional works are published by Boosey & Hawkes, Cimarron Music Press, Edition Peters, G. Schirmer, International Opus, and See-A-Dot Music.

Clearfield’s current commissions include:Long Live the Queen (a her-story of drag) (Cookie Diorio, librettist), for ArtPhilly 2026 and new works for the Canadian Guitar Quartet; Benjamin Pierce (Euphonium/Piano); and the University of Tennessee (Oboe, Horn, Piano).

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.

Andrea was selected as curator of the ArtPhilly 2026 Citywide arts festival this June responding to the nation’s 250th Anniversary with the theme “What now”. She was awarded a 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.

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 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, as well as the Orlando Sings Festival in 2022 with concerts of her Tse Go La cantata

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. 2021 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.