WHO WISC Fellow-in-Residence Andrea Clearfield
WHAT: WISC Fellow-in-Residence Andrea Clearfield in conversation with Santa Fe Pro Musica’s Executive Director Elizabeth Harcombe. Followed by a brief performance featuring Andrea Clearfield (composer, voice, piano) and Heidi Svoboda (master gong artist)
WHEN Tuesday, September 25, 2018 at 5:30pm
WHERE Unitarian Universalist Santa Fe, 107 W Barcelona
Women’s International Study Center thanks Santa Fe Pro Musica for their collaboration in producing this event.
For the month of September, the Women’s International Study Center will host Andrea Clearfield as Fellows-in-Residence. Please join us for a concert and conversation about her work.
This Event is produced in collaboration with:
Santa Fe Pro Musica brings together outstanding musicians to inspire and educate audiences of all ages through the performance of great music.
Andrea Clearfield
While in Santa Fe, Andrea will transcribe recorded folk melodies from Lo Monthang, Nepal towards the creation of a songbook of these melodies. She will then use these melodies to create two new works. Her fieldwork has included trips to this region including recording songs of the last of the royal court singers with anthropologist Katey Blumenthal between 2008 and 2010. She has already created several original works from this experience, using some of these melodies as the backbones of extended concert works. In tandem with the new songbook, she has been commissioned to write an extensive new work by the outstanding classical guitarist William Kanengiser of the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet as well as a large-scale cantata for the Grammy-winning professional chorus Conspirare of Austin, Texas.
Link to video about Andrea’s Work
Andrea Clearfield
Composer
Andrea Clearfield is an award-winning composer of music for orchestra, opera, chorus, chamber ensemble, dance, and multimedia collaborations. Clearfield creates deep, emotive musical languages that build cultural and artistic bridges. 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”. Her works are performed widely in the U.S. and abroad.
Among her 150 works are eleven large-scale cantatas including one commissioned and premiered by The Philadelphia Orchestra. Her 2009 Lung-Ta for large chamber ensemble, 2012 cantata, Tse Go La for double chorus and chamber orchestra and 2016 Rabsong Shar for soprano, chamber orchestra and digital audio were inspired by her Tibetan music fieldwork in Lo Monthang Nepal. There she documented the repertoire of the last of the royal court singers with anthropologist and ethnomusicologist Katey Blumenthal.
She will be the 2018 Composer-in-Residence at Music from Angelfire Festival, Ida Kafavian, Artistic Director where her works, including Tse Go La Chamber Suite and a newly commissioned chamber work, will be featured. She was named the Steven R. Gerber Composer-in-Residence with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia in collaboration with the American Composers Forum for the 2018-19 season. She is currently completing her first opera, MILA, Great Sorcerer to libretto by Jean-Claude van Itallie and Lois Walden, Kevin Newbury, director, commissioned by Gene Kaufman and Terry Eder.
Clearfield has been awarded numerous fellowships including a 2016 Pew Fellowship and 2017 Independence Fellowship in the Arts and has also held fellowships at the American Academy in Rome, the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, Civitella, MacDowell Colony, Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, Yaddo, Ucross, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Copland House among others. She was recently Visiting Composer at the University of Texas at Austin, Curtis Institute of Music, Yale-National University of Singapore, Emory University, Michigan State University, Temple University and McIlroy Visiting Professor at the University of Arkansas.
Dr. Clearfield served on the composition faculty at The University of the Arts from 1986-2011. She received a DMA in Composition from Temple University where she was the first composer to be awarded the University-wide Presidential Fellowship. She received an MM in Piano from the University of the Arts and a BA in Music from Muhlenberg College where she studied with her mentor, Margaret Garwood and graduated with Summa Cum Lauda, Phi Beta Kappa and first place awards in Performance and Musicianship.
Her works are published by Boosey & Hawkes, G. Schirmer, Hal Leonard and Seeadot and have been recorded on the Bridge, Sony, MSR, Albany, Crystal and Innova labels. Passionate about building community around the arts, she is the founder and host of the renowned Salon featuring contemporary, classical, jazz, electronic, dance, and world music since 1986 and winner of Philadelphia Magazine’s 2008 Best of Philadelphia Award.
Elizabeth Harcombe
Executive Director, Santa Fe Pro Musica
Elizabeth Harcombe is the Executive Director of Santa Fe Pro Musica and has been in nonprofit management and performing arts administration for thirteen years, with previous positions at Music from Angel Fire and Chamber Music Northwest. Elizabeth is a classical pianist and holds a master’s degree in music education from the University of Oklahoma. Recent presentations include the New Mexico Municipal League’s Annual Conference and the Chamber Music America National Conference. She has served on the board of the Women’s International Study Center and recently performed as pianist at the Lensic Performing Arts Center with the Los Angeles Dance Project. If you can’t find her, she’s on her mountain bike exploring the Santa Fe trails!
WOMEN’S INTERNATIONAL PROGRAM MANAGER’S NOTE WISC brings incredible scholars, artists and others to Santa Fe as fellows-in-residence. We hope you will attend their presentations, meet our fellows and support this important work by becoming a member.
Sincerely, Jordan Young Program Manager Women’s International Study Center
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