Enchanted Engagements is Philadelphia’s newest flute and string ensemble. Classical flute, violin, viola and cello perform fresh new arrangements from the hit Netflix series Bridgerton, as well as personalized arrangements of popular and rock hits. The trio are all established and respected members of the Philadelphia classical musical scene. The four members, Lois Bliss Herbine, Rachel Segal, Beth Dzwil and Mimi Morris-Kim, also work with the Fairmount Chamber Ensemble which regularly accompanies large vocal groups in the vicinity.
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”.
Herbine continues the legacy of the American school of flute playing and instruction established by Philadelphia Orchestra past principal flutist William Kincaid who helped create the incomparable Philadelphia Sound. An interview by Andrew Quint on Herbine’s tonal control and coloration as passed down through her teachers is a feature article in the October 2021 edition of the Absolute Sound Magazine.
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 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 inSacramento California, celebrating the series’ 40-year anniversary.
Herbine performs piccolo with the Reading Symphony Orchestra, the Erie Philharmonic and the Ocean City Pops Orchestra. For more information visit LoisHerbine.com
Rachel Segal, a native Philadelphian, is a violinist, educator, and the Founder and President of The Primavera Fund, a program that mentors and supports young musicians in Philadelphia. As an orchestral violinist, her career has taken her throughout the USA and abroad. She served as Concertmaster of the Central City Opera orchestra and as a violinist with the Colorado Symphony for twelve seasons, and has had posts as Concertmaster of the Orquestra Sinfonia Portugesa in Lisbon, Portugal, and as Fourth Chair of the Tampere Filharmonia in Tampere, Finland. She currently performs in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and the Washington D.C. area with various orchestras. She began her career as Concertmaster of the South Bend Symphony in Indiana.
As an educator, Ms. Segal has held positions at Regis University and the Community College of Aurora in Colorado, Luzerne Music Center in New York, is Director of Chamber Music at the Music and Mindfulness camp in Virginia, and has been Associate Director of the Young Musicians Debut Orchestra since its inception.
Ms. Segal received her Bachelor of Music degree from The University of Michigan and her Master of Music degree from the Yale School of Music. Prominent teachers include Sidney Harth, Paul Kantor, Barbara Govatos, and Jerome Wigler. She lives in the Brewerytown section of Philadelphia with her beagles Abby and Sam, and cats Gilbert and Sullivan.
Beth Dzwil, violist, founder, and director of the Fairmount String Quartet, is a seasoned chamber musician, performing for over thirty years with the Fairmount String Quartet and for fifteen years with the Elysian Camerata. She has been featured as a soloist with the Pottstown Symphony, where she served as principal violist for over twenty years, and with the Buxmont Chamber Players, the St. John’s Festival Orchestra, and the Fairmount Chamber Ensemble. In addition to her classical work, she has performed internationally and recorded six critically acclaimed jazz albums with the Tyrone Brown String Sextet. She teaches at the Community College of Philadelphia and the Haverford School, conducts the Philadelphia Sinfonia Strings youth orchestra, and coordinates the Adult Chamber Music Program at Settlement Music School.
Cellist Mimi Morris-Kim, loves playing chamber music on modern cello as well as continuo on Baroque cello. She has a doctorate in cello performance from the University of Michigan where she was a member of the University of Michigan Graduate String Quartet and where she met her husband, harpsichordist and medical physicist, Leonard Kim. Mimi performed as a member of the Ann Arbor Symphony for seven years. She performs frequently with the Riverside Symphony and as a substitute with many groups throughout the Delaware Valley. Mimi has three children, two of whom are among her twenty five cello students. Mimi Morris-Kim is on the faculty of Princeton String Academy and has extensive training in the Suzuki method of cello instruction.