Archive for March 2010
No Wedding Too Large
1 Comment | Posted by Andi Gladwin in Magical Weddings
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A few days ago I wrote about an incredibly small wedding that I performed at. On the flip side, this weekend I performed at a much, much larger wedding.
Hosted at the very nice Woburn Sculpture Gallery (photographed below) which is set in the grounds of Woburn Abbey, just a few miles from Milton Keynes, I performed at a wedding attended by three or four hundred people. The Sculpture Gallery was a beautiful venue and a great setting for close-up magicians.
I performed alongside another professional close-up magician, a close-up pickpocket and a caricaturist. The four of us entertained at the tables, in the bar and in the other rooms at the venue. It is always a lot of fun to work alongside other entertainers and all the guests appeared to really enjoy being amazed, pick-pocketed and caricatured!
If you are having a large wedding and need other entertainers (magicians, pick-pockets, caricaturists, or anything else), I am always happy to arrange them for you; picking only the very best entertainers that I have worked with before.
As a professional close-up magician I get to attend a wedding almost once a week. It’s really great to see the different sizes and scales of a wedding and to see the impact that great entertainment can make to any event … large or small!
No Wedding Too Small
0 Comments | Posted by Andi Gladwin in Magical Weddings
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Last weekend I performed for just seven people at a wedding in Sutton Bonington Hall, Loughborough, proving that there really is no wedding party too small to be entertained by a magician!
Sutton Bonington Hall was a fantastic venue that is perfectly suited to a magician. The staff were fantastic and the atmosphere was perfect!
The guests gathered in the ballroom while I performed a forty-minute magic show for them all. I find that this kind of performance works best for such small groups as everyone can get involved and get a front row seat to some amazing magic! In this style of performance, I get to know everyone’s names, get everyone involved and really have fun with the group. The wedding party seemed to really enjoy the magic and they told me that everyone left the show completely amazed!
Even with just a few day’s notice, at the bride’s request, I even managed to arrange to hire a fantastic caricaturist for the wedding, who drew his fantastic caricatures after my performance. Having worked with so many other fantastic entertainers, I’m always happy to recommend performers or help hire them for clients. This is not a service I charge for; just something I like to do where requested to make things easier for wedding organisers.
The wedding was a great success and it just goes to show; there’s no wedding too small to hire a wedding magician! In my next post, I’ll talk about the other side of the coin; the wedding that I performed at last night which was somewhat larger than seven people!
Need a Magician for Multiple Events?
0 Comments | Posted by Andi Gladwin in Hiring a magician
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This past week I’ve been hired by two companies to perform at a couple of their events. One is on a series of consecutive days, while the performances for the other is a few weeks apart. There are many great reasons to hire me for more than one event at a time, but here are the most important reasons:
1. It’s a lot less hassle than dealing with multiple close-up magicians.
2. I’m normally able to offer a discount for more than one event.
3. I get to know the other people working the event, which means that things tend to run incredibly smoothly.
Even if your events are a few months apart, it’s always worth enquiring about those too so that I can reserve the dates and guarantee my availability to work all your events.
So if you need a professional close-up magician to entertain your clients, then another magician to entertain your colleagues, and another magician to perform at your trade show … why not just hire one: me!
Magic Circle Close-Up Magician Awards
0 Comments | Posted by Andi Gladwin in Life updates
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Today is always a fun day in the magic calendar: The Magic Circle’s Close-Up Magician of the Year Awards. I’ll be trekking over to London in a few hours to The Magic Circle Headquarters in Euston to see ten or so close-up magicians fight it out for the title of Magic Circle Close-Up Magician of the Year.
The club arranges for around 100 non-magicians to attend the evening. Each magician performs for the non-magicians and then all The Magic Circle members watch the show on a big screen in another room. It’s always a lot of fun and there’s always great banter between the magicians.
As an organiser of a conference for close-up magicians, it’s important that I stay up to date with the trends in magic and the best magicians in the country, so this is always an important event for me.
The rest of the week is also busy with a couple of meetings and performances including a wedding at the end of the week with several other entertainers including magicians and pickpockets. I always enjoy big shows like this and it’s great fun to see other magicians perform in the same environment.
Cheltenham Magician Live
0 Comments | Posted by Andi Gladwin in Performances
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Want to see me and some other fantastic magicians perform live in a cabaret magic show in Cheltenham? If so, act quickly as tickets are selling fast!
An Evening of Deception is a one-off magic show running on 28th April 2010. I’ve put on a host of my favourite magicians and we’re all performing cabaret magic in the intimate studio space at The Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham.
With only a few tickets left, it’s set to be a great show and I’m confident that tickets will sell out way before the show. See the An Evening of Deception page for more info!
Grosvenor House – London Magician
0 Comments | Posted by Andi Gladwin in Hiring a magician
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A great thing about being a close-up magician is that I get to visit some amazing venues. Grosvenor House is always a favourite and is frequently host to close-up magicians. It’s an iconic, luxury London hotel in Mayfair and I’ve performed close-up magic there a number of times and will be back there next month.
Here’s a customer testimonial from last time I performed at the hotel. It was for a glitzy charity ball featuring dozens of celebrities:
I look forward to returning to this great venue soon!
Professional Close-Up Magician
0 Comments | Posted by Andi Gladwin in Hiring a magician
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I can’t imagine how difficult it is to choose which close-up magician to hire. There are so many close-up magicians with great websites, cool photos and such that it must be a nightmare to decide on one.
Here’s a useful piece of advice (whether you hire me, or anyone else): look for a professional magician. A professional magician is someone, like myself, whose only job is to perform as a close-up magician. I don’t have to hold up a day job and fit my performances into my spare time. Instead, my sole income is from performing as a magician.
There are hundreds (possibly thousands) of great amateur magicians and if getting a magician at a very low price is your only concern, an amateur magician would be perfect. However, professional magicians often have much more performance experience and have to be consistently fantastic performers as it’s the only way they’ll pay their bills at the end of the month.
I’ll try to detail some other useful ways of how to choose a magician in future blog posts. In the mean time, I thought this blog could have some more imagery, so here goes:
Find me on The Magician Directory – A Worldwide Directory of Magicians
An Evening of Deception
0 Comments | Posted by Andi Gladwin in Performances
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The Everyman Theatre in Chetenham asked me and a few magician friends to put on a magic show. So, I’d like to announce An Evening of Deception on 28th April 2010.
The show will feature four or five magicians and will be hosted in the theatre’s intimate cabaret venue. It’s a great opportunity to see some fantastic close-up magicians and mind-readers perform live in a great setting. The performers, so far are:
- Steve Knibbs (host)
- Myself
- Rob James
- Thom Peterson
We may be announcing an additional performer or two nearer the time, depending on their schedules, so stay tuned for more info!
Check out the Evening of Deception page for more details. If you want to see me perform in Cheltenham before that, you can also see me at a gig in aid of Haiti this coming Friday.
Gadget Show Exposure
0 Comments | Posted by Andi Gladwin in About magic
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Over the years television producers have felt it acceptable to expose magicians’ secrets. Normally, here’s what happens:
1. The television show exposes the secret.
2. Magicians go crazy.
3. The press pick up on it and make a big deal about it.
Whether that happens with The Gadget Show’s recent exposure of magic, time will only tell. I’m not going to go crazy because it was all a little far fetched!
If you saw the show, let me clarify that magicians don’t need to spend £40,000 to perform a card trick. Everything performed on the show can be created using genuine sleight of hand and skill.
It’s worth stating that when you hire a professional close-up magician like myself, you can be sure that you’re hiring someone funny, with fantastic presentational skills and the ability to perform genuine sleight of hand magic. Sure; those gadgets are cool; but we really don’t require them … and I hope to have the opportunity to show you that one day!
