2008, he underwent surgeries but died on 23 May 2010 of the brain tumour. He is survived by his life partner, Jacqui O'Rourke (a.k.a. Jacqui O'Connor), and their child. In July 2021, Brisbane-based independent music enterprise SGC Group, signed a partnership to release O'Connor's music digitally. In April 2022 O'Connor's final album, Looking Through My Window was released. It was recorded in the year leading up to his passing. Composing and recording An independent artist, O'Connor recorded all of his music in his own recording studio. Situated on a 42-acre rainforest property, "Hidden Forest" (also the name of an album and a song) on the Blackall Range in Queensland, he described it, "a most inspiring place to live and work", as the studio itself was positioned above the trees, where "...birdsongs fill the daytime... in winter a magical mist floods through the forest and surrounds the house. At night, the sounds are amazing... owls echo across the gorge, crickets and frogs lull us to sleep every evening." O'Connor also recorded as he wrote, with most of his pieces beginning on the guitar or the piano and advancing from there. O'Connor wrote, or began writing, most of his pieces in the early morning, saying "...in the wee hours of the morning... I begin to hear/feel a melody and I simply cannot stop myself from sitting at the piano or picking up a guitar and trying to capture it... before it leaves." O'Connor considered himself a guitarist more than anything else, claiming that many of his songs would begin on a guitar, even if there was no guitar in the final recording. He played a range of different guitars including 6-string steel string guitars, classical guitars and 12-string guitars. O'Connor mainly played Taylor Guitars, although he claimed that his favourite guitar was a hand-made Mirabook, built for him by Gary Albrecht, admitting, however, that he favoured a 'very special' Takamine Guitars Santa Fe classical. O'Connor's secondary instrument was the piano, in particular, a Yamaha C4 baby grand piano. O'Connor claims that this is where most of his composing came from. As well as the guitar and the piano, O'Connor also played the flute, both metal and wood based flutes, as well as an Electric Wind Instrument (EWI) which allowed for a wide variety of instrument sounds to be produced on one instrument. He also played percussion, the bass guitar and keyboards. O'Connor