Flautist Bessie O. Welsh ’66 graduated with a bachelor’s degree in music performance, cum laude, and then completed extensive graduate work towards a graduate degree in music at Yale University.
Her studies at Yale were interrupted in 1969 when she received two consecutive grants from the Fulbright Commission to study at the State Music Conservatory in Hamburg, West Germany, where she earned both Artist’s Diplomas in 1971 with highest honors.
Welsh played flute at a dizzying array of American and European venues throughout her life. A few of her achievements include being founder, music director and president of the International Bach Music Festival in Amsoldingen, Switzerland; serving as a member of the Swiss Women’s Music Forum and the U.S. National Flute Association; and, in 1970, becoming the first American woman to hold a solo flute position in the Northwest German Philharmonic, a position she held until 1976.
From 1976 until 2002, Welsh was as an instructor of flute at the Music Academy in Thun, Switzerland, and also taught flute at the Spiez Teacher’s College in Steffisberg. She recorded extensively for West German, German, French-Swiss and U.S. radio stations and received an American Music Center grant for her debut performance at Carnegie Hall in 1982.
Bessie Welsh died Aug. 2 in Salem-Spital, Bern, Switzerland.
