James A. Rothwell, DMA
1942-2015
Jim & Kriss on Valentine’s Day 2015. Jim asked for a retake, thinking his expression looked “a little mischievous.” Kriss replied, “Yeah…so?”
Jim was a man of superb talent and generosity, and he was fun to be around. He had this marvelous ‘joke drawer’ that popped out to ambush the sober or disarm the ponderous—humor as counterpoint.
He could be impetuously curious yet obsessively focused, skeptical yet astonished by new discoveries as well as wisdom from the past. He was above all happiest using his unique insights to solve problems.
Just to touch on a few of his accomplishments:
Jim was an exceptional trumpet player (classical and big band jazz—including a brief gig with the Tonight Show Band on the road), a mentor to many students at UMKC Conservatory where he founded the Electronic Music Studio and the Recording Program, designed the audio facilities of the UMKC Performing Arts Center, and earned his Doctorate. Perry Cook, a former student who went on to head the Princeton Sound Lab remarked:
He demonstrated, fed, and supported the inner nerd/musician in so many of us. A (doctoral level) trumpet player who frequently solders doesn’t have to be an oddity. We will miss him indeed. Tributes will ensue.
The soldering remark refers to Jim’s inborn talent as a electronics/RF whiz kid. As a boy, he would crawl out of the window at night and climb onto the roof to string antennae wires between the house and tall trees to tune in far away places—even China. He had discovered the beauty of music and acoustics by crawling under the piano to listen intently. This curiosity had drawn him toward the experimental world of electronic music as well as the technical challenge of producing high quality audio recordings.
With the onset of the personal computer market, Jim’s entrepreneurial spirit led him to leave the university to start a small software company, Midwest Micro. Products included telecommunications software to connect Commodore computers to mainframes, which later was licensed to the New York Institute of Technology for the very first distance learning program.
Jim’s technical and aesthetic gifts later culminated in the invention of the Speech Enhancer (SE), a device that has allowed hundreds of people with speech disorders to be understood using their own voice.
Along the way, he was awarded St. Louis County Economic Council Entrepreneur of the Year in 1996, was consultant to the likes of Motorola, Washington Univ. and NASA—he even received a standing ovation from 125 Fire Chiefs assembled for the 1997 IAFC Metro Fire Chiefs conference in Minneapolis, who wanted to adapt the SE technology for first responders.
More recently, he pursued our work together making movies and providing post-production sound for films, especially those that bring greater understanding to a world in turmoil. Many focused on profiles of people on the leading edge: a St. Louis civil rights activist who discovered lead poisoning (Ivory Perry: Pioneer in the Struggle Against Lead Poisoning), a filmmaker who produced the expose “Iraq For Sale” (Greenwald In St. Louis), an indigenous group in Colombia defending its traditional culture (The Embera Chami), young Russians speaking out (Living with HIV-AIDS: The Human Cost of Social Exclusion), and young African-Americans interviewing their elders (From Jim Crow to Barack Obama). Dramatic shorts (Gravity and Wrestling With The Gods) inspired experimentation with techniques such as recording surround sound on location.
Jim the teacher re-emerged to help Lindenwood Digital Cinema students, St. Louis independent filmmakers and camera-wielding progressive activists to improve the quality of their projects. His last, unfinished electronic design was the “Camera Buddy,” an attachment to help students record better sound when documenting Ferguson-inspired stories.
Jim and I shared a wonderful blended family…immediate family surviving him include: two brothers (Don and Ed Rothwell), a son (Dan Rothwell), a daughter (Julie Rudman), and six spirited grandchildren. The grandkids were often encouraged to create skits that Grandpa recorded on video, often tricked out with green screen effects, delivered on DVD at the next holiday. With a new camera in hand, our 2012 trip to Lebanon to visit family was well-documented—5,000+ photos and video clips!
Jim’s passions followed him into the kitchen (as a fine cook) and the backyard (as a casual gardener). Every winter as the snow began to fall, Jim would spread gourmet birdseed from the large metal can on the patio. We would hover by the patio door for the chaos to ensue as chirps went out among the feathered kith and kin of the area: “Banquet is served on Cypress Village Drive!”
Kriss & Jim in SF Chinatown, c.1983
We split up shortly after…then gratefully reunited 17 years later in 2001.
How to honor this man of many talents? An interesting trend these days is to mimic a person’s passions or hobbies: fishermen go fishing, quilters have a quilting bee. We tried to ask if he wanted something like that. He didn’t answer, but I could see his wheels of imagination turning…
Hey, in honor of Jim, let’s get together and
play trumpets… or
Come over to my bench and spend the day
designing useful electronic circuits— it’ll be fun… or
Wanna go record some frogs in 5.1 surround?
On August 15 a group of immediate family and former students from UMKC Conservatory of Music gathered for a Memorial Celebration in Kansas City. We decided to tell stories, both hilarious and poignant, recalling our favorite experiences with Jim. Video and photographs of this event, plus history spanning the UMKC years, can be enjoyed at this website dedicated to Jim’s legacy as founder of the Electronic Music and Recording Studios: InRoom202.org
To honor his legacy, a campaign to raise funds for the James A. Rothwell Memorial Scholarship endowment has been launched to benefit future students interested in exploring music technology. (Details at The.JAR.Fund)
Instead of a funeral, we fulfilled Jim’s wish to donate his body for scientific research. Always found of spending the day out in nature, Jim requested his ashes to be spread in a favorite remote spot — a “bluff above the quarry” south of Bull Shoals Dam, which we will do next April 2016.
Each of you who knew him may have your own way to honor his memory. (I’d love to hear what popped into your mind—whether wistful or wacky.)
Jim himself would probably defer to Mark Twain:
“When I was younger, I could remember anything,
whether it had happened or not.”
Well, Dear, you happened…and we who love you will never forget. I have yet to comprehend life without you.
Love to all,
Kriss Avery
St. Ann, Missouri
