Tony O'Connor (composer)

Tony O'Connor (15 March 1961 – 23 May 2010) was an Australian composer, producer and performer of instrumental music. His music has sold over three and a half million copies worldwide, releasing his debut album in 1987 and his last in 2007. Tony O'Connor also composed music scores for film and television and is one of Australia's biggest selling instrumental musicians. His music sometimes utilises sounds from nature, and is very much focused on relaxation and what he called music therapy.
O'Connor died on 23 May 2010, due to a glioblastoma multiforme.

Tony O'Connor's first album "Journey" was released in 1987, classified as "Creative Relaxation Music". O'Connor had previously worked with psychologists and masseurs to create music that was specifically produced to calm and relax the listener. As a result of the album's medicinal qualities, to relieve stress, depression, sleeplessness, and muscle tension, as well as to slow the heart and breathe rate of listeners and lower blood pressure, "Journey" became sought after by professional therapists and natural healthcare specialists.

As demand for O'Connor's album grew, Tony and his wife Jacqui set up their own record label; Studio Horizon. This enabled O'Connor's music to be sold to a much wider audience than before, which resulted a large jump in album sales. By 1991, O'Connor had composed and produced "Mariner", which achieved Gold status within a few weeks of sale. "Mariner" has sold over one and a half million copies to date.

From 1992 - 1997, O'Connor collaborated with Australian wildlife photographer Steve Parish. The two artists combined their passions and their professions to make a range of CDs set to particular nature themes, resulting in albums such as Uluru, Kakadu, Rainforest Magic, Wilderness and Windjana - Spirit of the Kimberly. These albums were enormously popular and sold in numbers unprecedented by any Australian Unsigned artist at the time; each title reaching Double Platinum sales, with two albums reaching Triple Platinum sales and one album selling more than half a million copies.

An independent artist, O'Connor recorded all of his music in his own recording studio. Situated on a 42-acre rainforest property called "Hidden Forest" (also the name of an album and a song) on the Blackall Range in Queensland, O'Connor described it as "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 Sante 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 was a solo artist, playing all instruments in his recordings. He did, however, collaborate with guitarist Paul Clement on the album "Summer Rain", with songs written by both artists featured on the CD. Paul Clement was also featured playing the guitar on other albums - "Mariner", "Tales of the Wind", "Bushland Dreaming", "Lovesong", "Live in Concert", "Dreams and Discoveries" and "Whispering Sea".

To record his music, O'Connor used AKG Acoustics and RODE Microphones mics on a Sony digital console. The microphones were first fed through two Amek Channel-In-A-Box units for equalizing and compression. All Taylor guitars were recorded directly using Fishman pickups. As O'Connor was passionate about achieving the best quality recording possible, the equipment he used changed as technology improved and, as a result, the exact equipment used to record each album is not known. "Wind Seeker", however, was tracked, mixed and mastered within Emagic's Logic Audio software, using Digidesign digital interfaces on a Macintosh G4 466Mhz computer. The album was recorded in 24bit 44.1 kHz digital audio, however the final master was dithered to 16bit using Waves software plug ins.

• Journey (1987)
• Because We Fly (1988)
• Childlight (1988)
• Mirror Moon (1989)
• In Touch (1989) - Platinum Album Award
• Mariner (1990) - 1.5 million copies sold
• Tales of the Wind (1990) - Gold Album Award
• Bushland Dreaming (1990) - Platinum Album Award
• Hidden Forest (1990) - Platinum Album Award
• Rainforest Magic (1991) - Over half a million copies sold
• Uluru (1991) - Triple Platinum Album Award
• Seashore Sunrise (1991 - Discontinued and then re-released in 1995) - Platinum Album Award
• Kakadu (1991) - Triple Platinum Album Award
• Wilderness (1992) - Double Platinum Album Award
• Australian Bush Garden (1992)
• Dreams and Discoveries (1994) - Platinum Album Award
• Lovesong (1995 - Re-released in 2001) - Platinum Album Award (Re-release also earned a Platinum Album Award)
• Windjana (1996) - Double Platinum
• Summer Rain (1997)
• Music for Mother and Child (1998)
• Dreamtime (1998)
• Live in Concert (1998) - Gold Album Award
• Whispering Sea (1999) - Gold Album Award
• Awakenings (1999)
• Zodiac Collection (2000)
• Under Southern Skies (2000) - Gold Album Award
• Hall of Beginnings (2001) - Gold Album Award
• Enchanted Christmas (2001) - Platinum Album Award
• Wind Seeker (2002) - Gold Album Award
• Aqua Zone (2003)
• Private Collection (2004)
• Memento (2005) - Gold Album Award
• Complete Calm (2007)
• Australian Lullabye (?)

(As of 2008)