FORMER colleagues and students are to mark the death of one of the most influential academics and composers to work at the University of York with a concert dedicated to his life and times.

John Paynter, Emeritus Professor of Music, department head for 11 years and a staff member at Heslington from 1969, was recognised as a ground-breaking specialist in music in education.

The 78-year-old will also be remembered for working with Jim Henson on music for The Muppet Show. The opening concert of the autumn season at Jack Lyon’s Concert Hall, on October 20, featuring a programme of Handel Cantatas – his favourite music – will be the first of a series of tributes and dedications paid to him over the next few months.

Prof Paynter, from 1973 to 1983 director of the national Schools Council Project, Music in the Secondary School Curriculum, had books and articles translated into many languages and over a 30-year period lectured and took seminars in more than 20 countries. In 1997, three years after he retired from the university, he completed a long-term musical research project with Italian school teachers.

But there was another side to his life which many of his academic colleagues and even close friends knew nothing about.

For three years, following an introduction by the international violinist Yehudi Menuhin, he made regular weekend trips once a month to New York and Toronto to meet with Jim Henson and The Muppets’ production team, to advise and help create new programmes for children, as well as writing signature-tune music for some of the characters.

He left York on Friday after work and was back in the department in his trademark suit and highly polished shoes on Monday mornings shortly after seven o’clock, with Miss Piggy and The Muppets a jet-lag away.

When appointed to the university in 1969 he fulfilled the town-and-gown pledge of the then Vice-Chancellor, Lord James, by becoming musical advisor to city’s director of education, Dick Threlfall, and followed that by working with children in the York Festival of 1973. He was appointed OBE in 1985 and made an Honorary Member of the Guildhall School of Music, London in 1986.

A lifelong organist, a skill he gained as a schoolboy as a trade-off for missing games at Emanuel School, South London, he spent 30 years playing in his neighbouring parish church at Kexby and, after it closed for worship, filled the same role at Thornton church.

He is survived by Joan, his second wife whom he married after the death of Elizabeth; a daughter, Catherine, a grandson, and a stepson and stepdaughter.