TALENTED musician John King dedicated his life to Oxford orchestras and was an inspirational teacher for many years.

After suffering cancer, he died on June 22 aged 76.

Born in Lancashire in 1943, Mr King attended Bolton School where he developed a passion for music.

While reading Law at Wadham College, Oxford, he was regularly involved in music, playing the trumpet with the Oxford University Orchestra, and the Oxford Orchestral Society under Sydney Watson.

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In 1965, he co-founded, with the distinguished baroque trumpeter, Don Smithers, the Oxford Pro Musica, an Oxford-based professional orchestra later renamed the City of Oxford Orchestra.

His collaboration with the Greek conductor, Yannis Daras, a lifelong friend, with whom he shared an encyclopaedic knowledge of music, ushered in a revolutionary era in the musical life of Oxford.

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In its heyday, the orchestra gave some 70 performances a year and attracted world-class soloists such as Nigel Kennedy, Cristina Ortiz, Howard Shelley, Myung-Wha Chung, Julian Lloyd Webber, and Marios Papadopoulos who maintains a musical presence in Oxford today with the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra. Mr King also introduced an annual summer season of baroque concerts in Merton College Chapel.

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Pianist and conductor, Marios Papadopoulos wrote about his long association with Mr King: “John invited me to give a piano recital in the Holywell Music Room as part of the Oxford Pro Musica’s Summer Series in 1975 and subsequently engaged me to perform with the orchestra the following season and on numerous occasions thereafter.

“John was a man of great vision and humility. I spent many hours in his company and admired his deep knowledge of music and repertoire. His programming was ingenious, matching works together to form a cohesive musical narrative.

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“John introduced me to Oxford and provided me with a platform on which to share my music-making with a discerning audience. When I founded the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra in 1998 (the Oxford Philomusica as it was known then), he stood by me.”

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Mr King, who lived in Faringdon, also collaborated with Gordon McDougall, artistic director of the Oxford Playhouse to form Oxford Music Theatre, which company was one of the first outside New York and London to tour a production of Tom Stoppard’s Every Good Boy Deserves Favour. In the late 1990s Mr King and the trumpeter Roger Payne formed ‘La Réjouissance’, a trumpet and organ ensemble which performed many concerts in Oxford and produced a CD of the same name.

He also contributed to feasibility studies for the creation of the Jacqueline du Pré building at St Hilda’s and the adaptation of St John the Evangelist into a new 500-seat concert venue for Oxford. Mr King was a dedicated and inspirational teacher and the brass coach for the Thames Vale Youth Orchestra for many years.

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His marriage to his first wife Carolyn West was dissolved in 1994.

In 2006, he married Thérèse Maitland. He is survived by Ms West, his wife Thérèse, two stepsons Nick and Luke and six step grandchildren, Ellie, Oskar, Konrad, Lucy, Milton and Alfie.