Andrea Clearfield joins the fourteenth annual festival, scheduled for Thursday, March 6, to Sunday, March 9, at the historic Charter Oak Cultural Center as guest composer, featuring the Philadelphia-based composer in multiple events. The festival includes performances of Dr. Clearfield’s music, in addition to an international selection of historical and living women composers. Oboe Duo Agosto and the Sylvanus Ensemble join the festival as guest artists for four day celebration.

2014 Composer-in-Residence: Andrea Clearfield

Andrea Clearfield is an award-winning composer of music for orchestra, chorus, chamber ensembles, dance, and multimedia collaborations. 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”, by the L.A. Times for her “fluid and glistening orchestration” and by Opera News for her music of “timeless beauty”. Dr. Clearfield has been awarded fellowships from the American Composers Forum at the American Academy in Rome, the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center and Civitella Ranieri in Italy and Fundaciòn Valparaiso in Spain. She was awarded a 2012 Fellowship at Montalvo in California and 2013 residencies at Moulin à Nef in France and the Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, NM. Other awards include fellowships at Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, Ragdale and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is founder and host of the renowned Philadelphia Salon concert series now completing its 26th year featuring contemporary, classical, jazz, electronic, dance, and world music and winner of Philadelphia Magazine’s 2008 “Best of Philadelphia” award. As composer-in-residence, she is speaking at The Hartt School’s Institute for Contemporary American Music and Central Connecticut State University’s Music Forum. Information on her music and a complete bio can be found at www.andreaclearfield.com.

2014 Guest Artists: Oboe Duo Agosto & Sylvanus Ensemble

The Sylvanus Ensemble, through its exotic combination, breathes new life to established works, and gives modern music a fresh voice. The core group of oboe, English horn, strings and piano brings an expanded, flexible repertoire to concerts that provides a great deal of variety. Each of the musicians pursued studies in different parts of the world – Montreal, Bangkok, Stuttgart, Taiwan, Korea, and the United States – prior to meeting in Connecticut.

In August, 2010, the Ensemble gave their Asian debut in Taipei, Taiwan, funded by the Taiwanese National Culture and Arts Foundation and Forum Music. Strident advocates for new music, the group has commissioned and premiered numerous works for their core ensemble. For more details, visit sylvanusensemble.wordpress.com.