Spanish Magic

Coming up in just over one week, we will be hosting a special event with renowned Spanish card magician, Dani DaOrtiz. The show takes place on Saturday, November 9 at 8:00 PM at The Wychwood Theatre. This is our third time at the Wychwood - an elegant and intimate space built into the old streetcar barns just off of St. Clair. Asi Wind performed there in 2011 and I had the premier of my show there in 2012. The venue is ideally suited to the performance. There are no bad seats in the house and Dani is a superlative performer. I first saw him live earlier this year in Columbus, OH performing for a room full of knowledgable magicians. Having seen a lot of magicians, I can tell you that few magicians can delight and entertain a room that size for an extended period of time. And even fewer can fool a room full of magicians. You could probably count the number of living magicians in the world who can do both on your fingers and Dani is one of them.

Tickets are now available online for $30 (fees and taxes already included) with discounted tickets for groups of five or more. Scroll down to purchase through Eventbrite using PayPal or your credit card. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about the show.

I hope you can join us for what is sure to be an unforgettable event.

Online Ticketing

for

Dani DaOrtiz - Magic from Spain

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Performances are family friendly but not recommended for children under twelve.

Produced in association with

Abracadabaret

,

The Sid Lorraine Hat & Rabbit Club

and the

Browser's Den of Magic

.

Magic at the Winchester

As I've written previously, Abracadabaret (formerly Friday Night Magic) used to be a weekly show in downtown Toronto. Over the past five years we've presented a variety of special events and a number of different venues, but scattered throughout the year. After arriving at the Winchester earlier this year for a short run of Lies, Damn Lies & Magic Tricks, we began offering a monthly show. Now, we're formally declaring The Winchester in Cabbagetown our new home and we'll be presenting a weekly show every Sunday night at 7:00. 

The Winchester is perfect for a magic show. Their stage has remarkable sound and lighting for a venue that size, there is free parking on the street, the menu is wonderful and it has just the right amount of magical weirdness: it features fireplaces in the middle of the walls, extra high ceilings which hold strange mysteries and the iconic Canadian magician Doug Henning used to live in the neighbourhood - there is even a small floral garden commemorating him around the corner!

As we did in years past, we will rotate through our favourite performers so that every show is different, and guests are free to come back as often as they like. To sweeten the deal, The Winchester has included a complimentary dinner buffet along with any ticket purchase (you'll still have to pay for your drinks, and you can still order off the regular menu... which is superb). We've also added discounts for groups purchasing tickets online, and additional discounts for groups of five or more.

To kick off the new series this Sunday (October 20) I'll be teaming up with the lovely and charming Rob Testa. I worked with Rob most recently on the Wendy's Canada #ExpectToBeAmazed online ad campaign. There were a lot of magicians on the set, but Rob was certainly the funniest and most personable on camera. His shows are extremely energetic, exciting and entertaining. I'm looking forward to being on stage with him this weekend.

I've received a few calls this week from people asking if the show is appropriate for children. That's a tough question to answer. While the show is certainly not designed for children, there's nothing particularly mature or offensive involved. We say officially that the show is not recommended for children under twelve, although we've had plenty of eight and nine year olds pass through over the years who have been perfectly delighted. So maybe kids are more mature than we give them credit for. I'm not sure.

Currently, we've signed on to perform weekly through the end of 2013, although we hope to continue that into 2014. If you're in the Toronto area, we'd love to see you at one of our shows. Come join us for an amazing night of magic.

Online Ticketing for Magic at the Winchester powered by Eventbrite

We are also always looking to expand our roster of performers. The details are available at www.abracadabaret.com/secret-stuff/ Those are interested are welcome to contact me for the password.

Taller Tales

More photos from Illusions of Grandeur, the strange and special show I did with Tyler Wilson last weekend. Thanks to Chris Mayhew for these. The show was an amazing experience. Now I have to turn my attention to two major upcoming projects this one and this one... it's going to be a busy month.

Tall Tales

This weekend, I finished the first round of shows for Illusions of Grandeur with my friend, Tyler Wilson. The goal was to create a true close-up magic show, instead of a show on stage that people had to watch from a distance. The worst seat in the house was 12 feet away from the "stage". The feedback we've received so far has been extraordinary. Tyler and I would like to thank everyone who was able to make it out. Putting together the show was an amazing experience. We had to assemble and script everything by email and there were several of Tyler's in the show that even I didn't even have the chance to see until the day before when Tyler arrived in Toronto.

At the moment, we don't have any concrete plans to remount the show anywhere, but I've spoken with Tyler and it's not entirely off the table... so keep an eye open for the possibility.

Here is the first round of photos from the show:

These are just the iPhone photos. The Abracadabaret elf, Chris Mayhew, is busily working on the nice ones. 

Magic that Sucks

Earlier this year, I contributed a trick to a special project organized by David Peck and the Mosquitoes Suck Tour. His plan was to create an instructional resource for magicians - magicians teaching magicians - and to take all the proceeds (actually all the revenue!) and put them towards the purchase of malaria preventing mosquito nets. It took a number of months to gather all the contributions and edit them together and the final product is now available. The Mosquitoes Suck Project can be downloaded for just $10. It includes contributions from Bobby Motta, Joshua Jay, Anthony Lindan, David Peck, Brian Roberts and Canadian Magician of the Year Winners Bill Abbott and Jay Sankey. All of the performers donated their time for the project and SoChange provided the filming and editing so 100% of the revenue goes towards bednets.

On "set" with Anthony Lindan, David Peck & Brian Roberts

The download comes as an mp4, 106 minutes long, 2.97 GB. It's an enormous amount of content at an incredible value. The reason for the $10 price tag: $10 buys one insecticide treated mosquito net which protects a family for up to five years. So please consider buying a copy now.

Mosquitoes Suck Project

If you're not interested in magic but still want to help, MST also has a bunch of cool stuff like T-shirts, and an assortment of private label fair trade coffee available at their shop.

thirteen

I'm staring at a little present from Bobby Motta. To go along with his lecture at the Browser's Den of Magic last weekend, he produced a set of notes which was available for sale.

notes

The good news is they're gorgeous. They come in an envelope with a wax seal.

seal

The bad news is, they come in an envelope with a wax seal, and I can't bring myself to open them. So I have absolutely no idea what they look like.

Full disclosure: I wrote them, so I know what they say. But I still have no idea what they look like.  They contain five tricks, all of the mental variety. (Actually it could be considered eight tricks; four of them are variations on a theme.) One of them offers an in-depth section on a creation of his, Blackmail, which you would have to own for it to be of use to you. And it also includes the piece which he uses to close his show at Dave & Busters. I'm not allowed to say which one of the five that is; you'll have to go see the show for yourself to figure that out.

The booklets were produced in a very limited number for the lecture (The Browser's Den only fits about 40-50 people before you have to start standing on people's shoulders) so if you're interested in obtaining a copy, you'd probably have to track Bobby down directly fairly soon. They may be reprinted, but if it's done in larger quantities, he might get lazy and the new edition might not look nearly as pretty.*

It's also possible that Bobby won't be around long enough to reprint them after I thank him for his... ahem... generous acknowledgement at the end of the notes. I'm not saying any more here. You'll have to go read it for yourself.

*If you ask me, his wive probably gets most of the credit for how pretty they look. But that's just a hunch.