Hailing from Oak Park, IL, pianist, guitarist, composer and improviser Rob Clearfield grew up steeped in music. After a childhood filled with garage bands, gospel choirs, South American guitar ensembles, and everything in between, Rob moved to Chicago to study at the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. During and after college, he embedded himself in the local music scene, residing in the city for fifteen years.
Over the course of his career, Rob has had the privilege of performing with artists such as John Wetton, Patricia Barber, Howard Levy, Makaya McCraven, Marquis Hill, Eighth Blackbird, Fareed Haque, Patrick Zimmerli, Matt Ulery, Simon Moullier, and Greg Ward, among others. He was a founding member of the prog-rock group District 97, and is the regular pianist with trumpeter Itamar Borochov and vocalist Grazyna Auguscik.
To date, Rob has released over ten recordings of original music and improvisation. He made his bandleading debut and his first two albums with the jazz-meets-indie-rock band Information Superhighway. Following co-led projects with saxophonist Caroline Davis in 2019 and drummer Quin Kirchner in 2022, Rob’s released Ashes and Diamonds in 2023; a five-movement suite exploring the nature of transitions from one era to another, and how cataclysmic events bring about both positive and negative changes. Rob’s newest album Voice in the Wilderness (2025) features Joe Sanders, Fred Pasqua, and Itamar Borochov.
In addition to performing and recording, Rob has also received commissions to compose for theater (Purdue University), film (The Lost Remake of Beau-Guest), and from the Brazos Valley Symphony Orchestra in College Station, Texas. Howard Reich of the Chicago Tribune writes, “In our very noisy world, pianist-composer Rob Clearfield’s music arrives as a kind of balm.”
As his career continues to take him to new places, Rob has had the opportunity to connect with students all over the world. He has given masterclasses and clinics at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música (Mexico City, Mexico), the American Jazz Museum (Kansas City, MO), Bydgoszcz Conservatory of Music (Bydgoszcz, Poland), and the University of North Texas (Denton, TX). He has served on faculty at the Keith Hall Summer Drum Intensive at Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo, MI) and has been part of the ensemble-in-residence at the Guimarães Jazz Festival (Guimarães, Portugal), working with students from Escola Superior de Música e Artes do Espetáculo (Porto, Portugal)
Rob currently resides in Marseille, France.