Flamboyant character behind Carnival Messiah remembered

The service at St Aidan’s Church, Roundhay Road, Leeds, was followed by a reception at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, where she was a board member.

Loud speakers relayed the service outside as mourners gathered at a service of thanksgiving to mark the life of Dr Connor who was much-loved by the musicians, actors, dancers and the thousands of students she touched with her galvanising vigour, her stern passion and constant humour.

During the service a reading from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest was given by David Lascelles.

Dr Connor, an ethnomusicologist, musical director and one-time backing singer to reggae legend Jimmy Cliff, died after a heart attack.

She was a flamboyant character in the Leeds community, the city she made her home after arriving in the UK from Trinidad.

Her biggest success was Carnival Messiah, a stunning community musical which she devised and directed, which saw actors from the Caribbean work alongside people from the Yorkshire community. It was first seen at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 1999.

In 2007, the show, which required a cast of more than 100, was re-staged in a purpose-built theatre in the grounds of Harewood House, with David Lascelles working alongside Dr Connor as a producer.

She held a PhD in cultural studies and her career had seen her serve as a senior teaching fellow at the University of Leeds from 1992 to 2004 and also as an associate music director at the West Yorkshire Playhouse from 2001 to 2003.

Dr Connor’s work as a backing singer for Jimmy Cliff had been as part of a three-strong group of women, collectively known as The Sunbeams.