Lois Herbine

Lois Bliss Herbine is an internationally renowned solo piccolo recording artist. All six accompanied recordings from her CD, Take Wing, which include Vincent Persichetti, Daniel Dorff and Michael Daugherty premieres, have been broadcast on radio stations across the United States.  The Gramophone hails her recital as “high-flying” and Music Web International proclaims, “Another leading wind soloist takes flight”. In 2009, in her premiere chamber recording produced with DTR Music, Illuminations, her piccolo performance was praised as a “model of color-driven expression” that compared favorably to internationally renowned chamber artists (David Patrick Stearns, The Philadelphia Inquirer).

Herbine is also a solo piccolo recording artist on BCM&D and DTR Records. She has recorded World Music and Spoken Word tracks for UNESCO projects in 2017 and 2018 and produced a three track EP Alight in 2018 with the support of Powell Flutes which includes the premiere recording of Tweet! composed for her by Daniel Dorff and Amanda Harberg’s Prayer which is Herbine’s debut classical solo flute recording.

Herbine continues the legacy of the American school of flute playing and instruction established by Philadelphia Orchestra past principal flutist William Kincaid who, with the other fathers of the American School of Woodwinds, helped create the incomparable Philadelphia Sound. An interview by Andrew Quint on Herbine’s tonal control and coloration is a feature article in the October 2021 edition of the Absolute Sound Magazine. This interview was given free online access and is available to read here: William Kincaid Meets Spectral Analysis: Lois Bliss Herbine and Preserving the American Flute School Tradition.

Herbine plays flute and piccolo with the Reading Symphony Orchestra and has performed with dozens of other orchestras in the tri-state area. For eighteen years as solo flutist and piccoloist for Philadelphia’s new music ensemble, Orchestra 2001, Herbine worked closely with many composers including Gunther Schuller, Tan Dun, George Rockberg, Andrea Clearfield, Melinda Wagner and Jennifer Higdon. She made five releases with the ensemble for New World Records the Music of our Time CD series and for Albany Records. Her first recording with Orchestra 2001 was rereleased by the Innova Label in 2020. The CD is Now Your Colors Sing! is a collection of works by Gerald Levinson, advertised as “Pushing the color spectrum”. Her bass flute is central to the final composition of the two CD set in dark (three poems of the night) with a “veiled, mysterious chamber ensemble of low flutes and percussion”.

A December 2022 release of a groundbreaking work by composer Howard Hersh for piccolo solo with a sixteen-piccolo recorded accompaniment recorded by Herbine has recently gained critical attention for its “Deep expressive substance… by turns haunting, dancing, and lyrical.” This composition, I Had to Go Down in the Mines to Climb Up to the Sky, was written for Herbine in service to her Welsh coal mining ancestry and its premiere was the final work on her full piccolo recital at the Festival of New American Music in Sacramento California, celebrating the series’ 40-year anniversary.

In February 2024 a piccolo solo composed for Herbine by Cynthia Folio won the National Flute Association’s newly published music award. The work, Philadelphia Portraits: A Spiritual Journey is available through Alry publications and includes eight pages of program and performance notes written by Herbine.

Herbine has soloed at twelve National Flute Association conventions, oftentimes to favorable press.  In addition, she has performed in two closing ceremonies – in Anaheim 2010, as a duet with European piccoloist Peter Verhoyen, and in Washington D.C. 2015, with some of the world’s top piccolo players and the US Army Field Band.

While Lois Herbine has maintained an active teaching studio at her home in suburban Philadelphia for many years, it has been in recent years that professional flutists and piccoloists have sought her out for private lessons and coaching.  Nancy Nourse of Flute Focus magazine praised Herbine as a “piccolo pedagogue extraordinaire” for her role as resident instructor for the International Piccolo Symposium in 2009.  Herbine unwaveringly continues the pedagogy of her teacher John Krell and his book Kincaidiana, which describes the legacy and pedagogy of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s principal winds, flutist William Kincaid and oboist Marcel Tabuteau. With the support of Powell Flutes, Lois Herbine has given her “Golden Age” lectures and masterclasses to flute clubs and Universities across the country and a virtual “piccolo tips” workshop which was presented in America and Canada.

As a writer, Herbine has contributed articles for the national trade magazines Flute Talk, The Flutist Quarterly, The Flute View, the American Music Center’s web-magazine, New Music Box, and for Indiana University Press. A native of the Philadelphia area, she earned her Bachelor of Music from the New School of Music where she received the school’s highest honors in performance and academic achievement.

For four years Herbine served as both the principal flute for Peter Nero and the Philly Pops and for the Mann Festival orchestra, accompanying artists such as YES, Art Garfunkel and Brian Wilson on tour. She has performed in soundtracks for television and radio specials, theme music and commercials. Recording highlights were accompanying John Legend on a television commercial aired abroad, premiering an orchestral work by Bernard Hermann for Spike Lee, and recording orchestral solo flute for NFL Film’s Emmy Award-winning documentary “Johnny Unitas”.

In the summer of 2024 Lois Herbine became the director of the revolutionary new Philly Fife and Drum Company. Her corps has been invited to perform for America250PA events and for Pennsylvania town and city heritage events in celebration of our Nations’ birth. In December 2024 she and members of the Company recorded for the Roblox game Guts and Blackpowder, and her @piccolois videos on Youtube have garnered an international audience.

For more information visit LoisHerbine.com or ResoundingPhiladelphia.com