WILLIAM F. OCHS ’68

WILLIAM F. OCHS, a scholar, performer and teacher of Irish traditional music, especially the tin whistle, died Oct. 5, 2016. He was 70. A cum laude graduate who earned high honors in French and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, he earned an MFA in theater at Sarah Lawrence College. He dedicated his life’s work to playing, teaching, and understanding the history of Irish wind instruments: the tin whistle, wooden flute and uilleann pipes. He sought out teachers in the U.S. and Ireland at a time when almost nobody in the U.S. was playing the instrument. The recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to study in Ireland for six months, he was also involved with the Irish Arts Center in Manhattan, where he taught for more than 40 years through 2015. Throughout his long career, he explored many aspects of traditional music: performing, researching and writing, producing albums of other musicians, creating transcriptions of tunes, and teaching. In addition he was a political activist as well as an outdoorsman. Among those who survive are his partner, Margaret Vetare, and his sister.