Longtime sound engineer at UH Hilo Theater dies in accident

A motorcycle accident on July 15 in Colorado sent shockwaves across the Big Island.

Rob Abe, 61, of Volcano, was killed in a three-vehicle collision on US Highway 36 between Boulder and Lyons.

Abe retired in 2022 after 30 years and 2,364 performances as technical director of the University of Hawaii at Hilo Performing Arts Center.

The Boulder Daily Camera reported that Abe, who was riding a Ural motorcycle with a sidecar, was turning off the highway onto Neva Access Road when he crossed into oncoming traffic and was struck, according to a Colorado State Trooper. He died at the scene.

“He got the motorcycle with the sidecar and it was his dream to travel around the country and visit his friends and relatives,” said Justina Mattos, chair of the UH-Hilo performing arts department. “He did it last summer and had a great time and wanted to do it again this summer to see more people and places.”

A roadside memorial marks the site of the collision.

Abe was originally from Boston, but his father’s family is from Hilo.

“He was a rock’n’roll sound engineer and was here visiting his family,” Mattos said. “And on the last day of his trip, he happened to open the Tribune-Herald and saw an ad for a theater technician position. Rob spontaneously decided to apply.”

Jackie Pualani Johnson, professor emeritus of theater at the University of Hawaii (UH-Hilo), said Abe’s father was in the technology industry and Abe lived “in France and Japan and so many different places around the world” and was “like a Renaissance man.”

“Rob always solved my problems,” said Johnson. “In the theater, there is a crisis that needs to be solved. And Rob had the answers. And he did it in a quirky, wonderful way.”

Johnson said Abe was also a respected sound engineer off campus, traveling to Japan as a sound engineer with Halau O Kekuhi and also working with other local theater groups.

“He and I worked on Lois Ann Yamanaka’s books for Audible,” she said. “We spent a couple of months recording them at his house. He set up a little sound booth for me. It was a closet that he set up. So we’ve been working together a lot recently. We’ve had so much quality time together – and I realize now that was a gift.”

Abe has also worked as a recording engineer on albums by Technical Difficulties, Professor T and the East Side Shredders and The Ing Crowd.

News of Abe’s death spread quickly on social media.

Hollywood filmmaker Derek Frey, current head of Tim Burton Productions and a friend of Abe, said on Facebook that he appreciated “our creative spirit of anarchy.”

“From busting a band to starting a volcano, you’ve done some really cool creative things for me and countless others…” said Frey. “My crazy requests were never met with a ‘we can’t do that,’ but always with a ‘yes, we can.'”

Kekoa Graham, chief technology officer at Encore Global in Honolulu, said Abe changed his life.

“I use all the technical skills I learned working with him every day in my current job,” Graham said. “My consolation is that Rob died living his best life on his own terms.”

“He followed his dream, you know?” Johnson concluded emotionally. “This was something he had planned and wanted to do in his retirement. And he was in Boulder, that was his heart place. He had so many friends there, another circle of ‘Ohanas.'”

Email John Burnett at hawaiitribune-herald.com.