Lois Herbine after the closing ceremonies of the National Flute Association convention in Washington D.C, 2015, where she was a solo piccolo performer on John Williams, The Patriot and Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever with the U.S. Army Field Band.
PICCOLOIS - soloist and Recording Artist
Lois Bliss Herbine is an internationally renown 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 and soloists (David Patrick Stearns, The Philadelphia Inquirer).
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.
A December 2022 release of a ground breaking work by composer Howard Hersh for piccolo solo with a sixteen-piccolo recorded accompaniment, recorded by Herbine with engineer Drew Taurisano, has recently garnered 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 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.
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 currently performs piccolo with the Reading Symphony Orchestra, the Erie Philharmonic and the Ocean City Pops Orchestra. 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 six releases with the ensemble for New World Records the Music of our Time CD series, Innova Recordings and Albany Records.
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. Her commercial recording highlights include accompanying John Legend on a television commercial aired abroad, premiering an orchestral work by Bernard Hermann for Spike Lee on HBO, recording orchestral solo flute for NFL Film’s Emmy Award-winning documentary “Johnny Unitas” and performing lead fife in the December 2024 American map for the Roblox videogame Guts and Blackpowder.
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 from the “Golden Age”, flutist William Kincaid and oboist Marcel Tabuteau.
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. 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.
For more information on Lois Herbine's orchestral and teaching experience, lectures and publications and performing chamber ensembles follow the links or go to the home page and click on the individual boxes.