by | Feb 17, 2021 | Magic News
Reprinted from Conjuring Arts website
In 2011 Conjuring Arts was blessed to welcome a new team member, the legendary master, David Roth. David was world renown for his unequaled skill with sleight of hand coin magic and is considered by most as the most skillful coin magician of all time. Not only was David skilful but he was also extremely creative. I believe that if he only invented one routine (and he invented hundreds), the Tuning Fork, he would still have gone down as one of the greatest magicians of all time. David transformed coin magic through his vision, creativity and skill and by changing coin magic he changed magic.
Here at Conjuring Arts David did a number of different kinds of important work. He taught in our Hocus Pocus project which was an outreach program helping young people all over New York City. In this program David turned magic into a tool that helped young people heal, both physically and spiritually. He had such an impact that the New York Times featured David on the front page of their Metro section in 2014. David loved teaching and making a difference and he had a huge impact. As a natural extension of this program David taught in our very popular Conjuring Arts University. CAU allowed interested students to study with great masters virtually. David was excellent at this teaching and he had students worldwide who progressed rapidly by studying with the master. David’s final responsibility here at Conjuring Arts was a bit of a secret project; he transcribed thousands and thousands of handwritten documents making them text searchable. It’s not well known that in our database, Ask Alexander, we have many thousands of pages of materials from letters to notebooks to diaries that are handwritten and not easily searched. To remedy this David worked each day typing up fascinating magic history. Over the years he transcribed everything from Adrian Plate’s personal magic notebook to all of Stewart James’s correspondence to all of Houdini’s personal diaries! David Roth single handedly made Ask Alexander a much richer and deeper source for magic history.
To say that we miss David is an enormously painful understatement. David was family here at Conjuring Arts and he will be missed forever. Rest in peace David, we love you.
An online memorial will be held in the coming weeks, we will announce the date, time and link soon. If you have video or photos of David that you can share for this memorial please upload them here.