talkmagic.co.uk

The event runs every year, and is an entire weekend of magic in Central London. Here is a review of this weekends' events... I hope it makes you want to go next year. I'm not going to go into too much detail otherwise we'll be here all day, but I'll highlight the main bits.

Friday 25th November

7pm - Kostya Kimlat (USA) Lecture - A very strong opener for the weekend. Kostya is an exceptional magician with a great personality... and he's only 23 (I think)! His work mainly revolves around what he calls The Roadrunner Cull, which is very similar to Lennart Green's Angle Separation. Kostya displayed how he can cull half a deck as he spreads through it, and the technique behind it. I bought his lecture notes.

9pm - Roberto Giobbi (Switzerland) Lecture - I'm sure this guy needs no introduction... the author of one of the seminal works on card magic today... Card College. Roberto mainly talked about the psychology behind presentation, and also explained how you can load fruit with forced cards. Very interesting stuff, and a great lecturer too. He is very funny, and ugely intelligent, yet he makes everyone feel capable of doing what he displays.

Saturday 26th November

10:30am - The 22nd Annual Close-up Competition for the Kevin Reay Trophy. Each act has 10 minutes.

Karl Berseus (Sweden) - A good opener with a strong cups and balls routine. Unfortunately when he was getting the cups out, he dropped his spare ball! He covered well, but I think it went against him.

Steve Dela (UK) - I thought Steve did very well (Steve, if you read this, it was me that shook your hand in the foyer) Mind you, lots of people did I think! Another good routine that Steve has obviously put a lot of time into.

Rex Cooper (UK) - A nice old-timer act, and a really nice guy too. Rex showed those youngsters a thing or two with his routine, which is a re-working of the classic sponge balls tricks.

David Blanco (UK) - A really good routine invloving 3 selected £2 coins jumping across the stage into a covered glass. The last move the glass was uncovered, and the coin visibly jumps into a glass within another glass.

Ferenc Galambos (Hungary) - Very fluid cups and balls routine, some excellent card work, and a re-working of Dream Of Aces to finish. Superb.

Erik Nordvall (Sweden) - Very energetic ambitious card routine... slightly marred when he kept messing up his faro shuffle in his Triumph routine.

Olmac (France) - Cards and coin work from this French magaician. Unfortunately from where I was sitting he flashed quite a bit, so didn't really enjoy his routine as I think he could have covered his angles better.

William Houston (UK) - Cups and balls, and some great card handling, in this routine done to music.

Rick Merrill (USA) - Very funny guy. He does some amazing stuff with a Sharpie and a coin. His routine is based around being taught at home and only having a coin and a pen to practise magic with. Very enjoyable.

James James (UK) - Cups and balls routine from this kilt-wearing Scot. He also swallowed a modelling balloon, which I've seen before.

Interval - Lots of magicians with decks of cards in the bar. Good stuff!

Ralf Gagel (Germany) - I can't remember what this guy did I'm afraid... I was a little late in getting back from the bar and missed most of his act! Oops!

Szabo G Gabor (Hungary) - Cups and balls routine, and a find-and-locate your card piece. Unfortunately nothing stood out for me, but we were getting into cups and balls overkill by this point.

Antonio Perete (Spain) - Very funny act, although it was primarily a find and locate a card set, the presentation was very good.

Mario Bove (Italy) - Had to nip out for a wee at this point so I missed him too. If anyone saw him, can you PM me and I'll update this.

Kostya Kimlat (USA) - Very good act. The trick that stood out was a card on ceiling bit, in a theatre! A person was randomly chosen in the audience using the old chuck-a-toy thing. Then, as Kostya chucked the elastic-band wrapped deck up to the roof, the person named ANY card. One card stuck, and the deck landed in Kostya's hand. As Kostya fanned through the deck, the only card MISSING was the one that was stuck on the roof!

Martin Eisle (Germany) - Very funny act, done along to a pre-recorded voice. It's basically a coin and dice matrix, but a nice touch was when the tape sped up and he does some very fast matrix stuff. The ending was a nice surprise, with the cards rising by themselves to stand on their edges.

Helder Guimaraes (Portugal) - Some more excellent card work, and a find and locate bit onvolving members of the audience.

Philipp Tawfik (Austria) - Cups and balls routine, and some good card handling.

Phew! To the bar for a few swift ones, and some more chatting / showing off with cards.

3pm - David Merry (Canada) Lecture - Very funny magician/stand-up comic/inventor. He's best mates with a certain Mr Sankey, and had a lot of good prop magic. His lecture notes detailed how to build everything he showed us, plus more. He has a very good cap-in-clear-bottle routine, and detailed how to make the gimmicks. He also talked about presentation and audience working too.

4:15pm - Jerry Andrus (USA) Lecture - This guy has been around in magic for about 50 years, and has probably invented more stuff than we'll ever know. A good lecture, but I feel it would have been better 10 years ago. He's quite an old guy, and there were lots of long pauses when he seemingly forgot what he was doing, or was setting bits and pieces up. I enjoyed it, but I think some didn't.

Break - A bit of food, and more decks of cards are produced.

7:30pm - Gala Showtime with MC Noel Britten

Farrah Siegel (USA) - High energy act blending magic and dance. She did a linking rings bit using plastic hoops instead of metal rings, and also some great yoyo stuff. She's only 17, and seemed to me like one of those kids who has been groomed to perform, as her dad trailed her everywhere at the convention.

Roberto Giobbi (Switzerland) - Some brilliant stuff. Roberto passed around 10 bits of fruit (I got the apple) and did a routine with a £20 note, torn, appearing inside a 'randomly' chosen pieve of fruit from the audience.

Arthur Trace (USA) - Very good routine done to music. Some unbelievably dextrous fingers on this guy, as he twirled billiard balls in his hands like they were glued to his fingers.

David Shiner (USA) - Very funny mime artist, had the audience in stitches, never said a word, and no magic either!

Break - Quick drink with the missus at the bar!

Erik Borgman (Holland) - This guy can do stuff with footballs Rooney only dreams of. His finale is juggling 5 of them!

David Merry (Canada) - From his lecture earlier we knew what we were in for... fast paced comedy and some prop magic. Very good!

Scott Penrose (UK) - I'm sure many on here have seen Scott perform. Very skilled magician doing some classic magic, dove productions, and lots of smoke and fire!

Omar Pasha (France) - Unique act, hard to describe, but the stage is black with UV lighting, and Omar appears to levitate objects at will. The grand finale of the evening.

Sunday 27th November

10:30am - Dealers' Fayre - Dealers from all over the world came to try and sell us their wares, and they did a ruddy good job of it too. CUPS was infecting everyone!

12:00pm - Close-up Session

Roberto Giobbi - Brilliant.
Jerry Andrus - Some of his classics.
Rick Merrill - His competition routine with some extras.
Kostya Kimlat - More brilliance from this talented magician.
David Merry - More fast-paced stuff from this wacky Canadian.

Competition Results

3rd Place - £100 - William Houston
2nd Place - £500 - Rick Merrill
1st Place - £1000 Martin Eisle

Merit Awards went to: Olmac, Antonio Perete and Kostya Kimlat (I think he should have been in the top 3 personally)

2pm - Rick Merrill Lecture - Rick's lecture was hugely entertaining. He's a great guy, very approachable, and he talked about how he got started in magic, and went into detail on his sharpie and coin routine. His lecture notes were on sale afterwards, and he must have spent 20 minutes signing stuff for everyone.

4pm - Derren Brown Q&A Session - Derren was with us all weekend, mingling freely with all the magicians there. He was interviewed by Duncan Trillo for 20 mins, then he showed some stuff from his new show, which is on in March 2006. Then he took questions from the audience, and ended up showing us a street trick he has, where he got someone to draw a picture and he guessed it. Very entertaining and a good end to my weekend of magic.

Who else did I see? Jerry Sadowitz was there, as was Wayne Dobson. Jonathan from Dirty Tricks was around, and Ali Bongo seemed to be enjoying himself. Jon Lenahan was offering advice to people, and enjoying himself at the bar. But my highlight was shaking the hand of the man who invented one of the most used sleights, certainly one we have all used at one time or another I reckon. That man was Alex Elmsley!

I hope this review has succeeded in getting across a small amount of the excitement and joy I experienced on this excellent weekend. It really was worth the £70 my missus spent on getting me a ticket for my birthday. She joined me for the gala-show on the Saturday night (it is repeated on the Sunday too). Although I was there mostly on my own, I was mingling with other magicians as soon as the bar opened!

The dates are out for next year. The 24th-26th November 2006, so buy your tickets soon, and help keep this great event going, all organised by the MacMillan family and started by Ron MacMillan, who sadly passed away in January of this year.

Fantastic!

Great review Mark, this was obviously a great event! Er, any chance your better half will buy you another ticket for your birthday next year?

I have to say, it was fantastic. I had the best weekend. I went to the Saturday show with my best mate, who is also a magic hobbyist. The magic was really great. Arthur Trace's presentation is just incredible - incredibly stylish, let alone his fantastic Cardini-esque card production. Oddly, the mime artist David Shiner was one of the highlights of the weekend, which I have to confess I really didn't expect. When I saw mime on the list my heart sank, but his show is incredibly funny and involves many audience volunteers who are encouraged to act as silly as he does.

I went to Sunday on my own and had an incredible day. I saw the Jerry Andrus lecture, which was great. Really good to see he is still going despite his age. Someone complained to me later about him being slow; they said that he had no place at the convention; I really don't see that at all. He is a great magician who has a created a load of great tricks and techniques, can still baffle an audience, and has a great deal of important points to make on modern magic. It really angers me when people are disrespectful to others jsut because of their age. What is worse is that the guy who said this to me was at least 60!!!

I was lucky enough to spend thirty minutes on my own with Jerry Andrus, where he taught me some great card techniques and one of the tricks he did in his lecture. What amazed me about it was how simple and bold the technique was. I have already added it to my show. I asked him loads of questions and he was more than happy to share his thoughts, tricks and techniques with me.

I also got to spend twenty minutes or so one-to-one with Roberto Giobbi. I spent that time dealing with my problems with covering the pass, a subject which he was typically encyclopaedic on. I found Jerry and Roberto to be really approachable, friendly, encouraging and generous.

I also got to meet Ali Bongo, who I thanked for inspiring me to love magic when I was a nipper. He said that I can't blame him for all of card tricks my family and friends have to suffer on a daily basis!!!!! Andy Nyman was very friendly and signed a few things for me. He thought it would be highly amusing to get me to ask Derren Brown to sign a couple of copies of Nyman Lecture notes, which I duly did. Derren laughed a lot and proceeded to write "Dear Mike, this material is so terrible it makes me sick, Derren", which made me chuckle.

All in all I had an incredible day and I am already counting the days until next year. Was so excited all day that I completely forgot to eat, and then wondered why I was feeling really ill by about 7pm!!!!

Wow! Thanks for posting that. I love reading about magic conventions and this sounds like it was excellent.

Very good read. It must have takena while to write up. Thanks for that!

Yeah... it took a bit to write up. Lucky I had my program with handy notes to help me!

Flunkie... I wish I'd known you were off mate. We could have had a chat and swapped tricks! I too got some pointers from Roberto Giobbi on the pass. He's a great guy, very approachable and willing to help.

Tickets for next year? Count me in!

flunkie_uk wrote:Arthur Trace's presentation is just incredible - incredibly stylish, let alone his fantastic Cardini-esque card production.

I have to agree with you here. I thought his presentation was brilliant and performance captivating. He is definitely someone I would like to see more of in the future.

I also really enjoyed Kostya Kimlet's competition piece - for me he was the most memorable out of all the competitors and actually had a personality. I don't like cups and balls and coin routines at the best of times and, if I'm honest, got slightly bored with some of the competition pieces. I know it's about technique but at the same time I feel more effort should be put into presentation by some competitors.

I wish I could have made Friday's lectures, especially Kostya Kimlet's. I feel I have missed out, but at least I now have his lecture notes.

Oddly, the mime artist David Shiner was one of the highlights of the weekend, which I have to confess I really didn't expect. When I saw mime on the list my heart sank, but his show is incredibly funny and involves many audience volunteers who are encouraged to act as silly as he does.

I'm afraid I have to differ. I felt rather uneasy watching his first half performance in the gala show; I didn't think it was right to make the woman feel humiliated on stage. She clearly didn't want to kiss him, but was forced to. And then to add insult to injury, when she agreed to kiss his on the check he turned and kissed her on the lips. I just think it's inappropriate.

In general I enjoyed the weekend and shall be going to next year's.

Glad to see more people went from here.

We should try and meet up there next time... a sort of mini Talkmagic meeting at a convention-type-thing.

Should be fun!