My uncle Graham Lyons, who has died aged 87, was a jazz and classical musician, composer and arranger.
In 1967 he released a self-penned single, Jazz Bassoon, on Decibel Records, on which he played bassoon, clarinet, saxophone and piano. Later he was a member of various musical outfits, including the Alan Tew Orchestra, the Herman Wilson Chamber Group and the New Paul Whiteman Orchestra. In 1975 he founded the Classical Woodwind Quartet, performing 17th- and 18th-century music.
He also played in the orchestra pit in West End shows, including for The Threepenny Opera in 1972 at the Prince of Wales theatre and for Gypsy, starring Angela Lansbury, at the Piccadilly theatre. During the train strike of 1973 he would roller skate, bassoon in hand, to the venue.
While living in New Zealand, from 1980 to 1981, Graham played the saxophone in the orchestra at the Royal Variety Performance in Auckland, which was attended by Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip.
In between musical engagements he was for many years a peripatetic teacher at Barnsbury girls’ school and Holloway boys’ school in north London, and he also taught adults and children on a private one-to-one basis.
Through his teaching Graham realised that many children struggled with the weight and size of the traditional B-flat clarinet and so in 1988 he invented and launched the Lyons C Clarinet (later the Nuvo Clarinéo), a smaller and lighter plastic version of the instrument in the key of C, enabling children to start playing as early as five years old. It received a British Design Award in 1993 and was welcomed by clarinet teachers worldwide.
Its success led Graham to co-found a company called Nuvo to develop a range of plastic woodwind instruments and to publish an accompanying musical curriculum for them that is now widely used in schools around the globe. He was one of the most successful British composers of educational music, and his pieces feature regularly on syllabuses of nationally accredited music exam boards.
Graham was born in Hampstead, north London, to Dick, who owned a drapery business, and his wife, Debbe (nee Sugar). He began taking piano lessons aged six, prior to going to Charterhouse school in Godalming, Surrey. At Oxford University he played in the Bassett Hounds jazz band with Dudley Moore. Partly as a consequence, he did minimal work and was sent down after a year.
After completing national service in the RAF, Graham studied bassoon and composition at the Guildhall School of Music before embarking on his musical career.
Aside from music, he had a huge breadth of interests, including cricket, running, inline skating and skiing. He reared hawk moths from eggs in a cage in his garden, was a vegan many years before plant-based meals became popular, and taught himself Russian in a theatrical season, using the breaks during performances in a theatre pit.
A gentle man with a great sense of humour, in later life he lived in Kirkbymoorside in North Yorkshire, where he immersed himself in local music groups and village life.
Both of Graham’s marriages ended in divorce. He is survived by two children, Samantha and Meadow, from his first marriage, to Gill (nee Levin); a son, Adam, from his second marriage, to Clare (nee Young); a daughter, Daisy, from his relationship with a former partner, Shelley; his grandchildren, Stanley and Mabel; and his brother Alan.
