For over one hundred twenty years, Carnegie Hall has been a world-famous venue for music, but not magic. It was an honor, then — a once-in-a-lifetime achievement — to be able to perform my full evening magic show there on January 12, 2012. The show ran two hours, and received a standing ovation from the sold-out auditorium.

I’d like to thank all of you who came to the show. I’ll always remember the electric anticipation you projected as I walked on-stage. Looking out at you, I felt anticipation too — like we were creating a historic moment together.

Throughout my career I’ve always believed that magic has the potential to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with other performing arts, such as ballet, opera and orchestral music. Magic can be more, much more, than a simple diversion. The artistry required to construct and stage a theatrical magic show is on par with the training, thought and creativity required to present other traditional art forms.

My personal goal in staging a magic show at Carnegie Hall was to prove that the art of magic is capable of accepting its due respect, if only we give it the chance. It was immensely satisfying to see that the public supported this belief; the entire theater was sold-out months in advance.

Because I am used to performing for small audiences of 50 people at the Waldorf-Astoria, the nearly 300-seat Weill Recital Hall presented some challenges. I did my best to cross the footlights and reach out to the entire audience, even up to the balcony.

In this blog, I’ve composed a full report of the evening, from my perspective as performer and producer [...]

The New Yorker, October 31, 2011

READINGS AND TALKS BEHIND THE CURTAIN

Nov. 17

The magicians Steve Cohen, Joshua Jay, Eric Jones, and Todd Robbins talk about where their ideas come from, in a discussion and demonstration at the Library for the Performing Arts. (917-275-6975.)

Here is the press release for the November 17th event, organized by photographer and writer Herb Scher.

Press Release

For Immediate Release

Magic is an art that draws heavily from its heritage, and many effects with cards, coins, ropes, and levitating ladies have long been staples of the repertoire. Yet, like other art forms, it requires a well-spring of new ideas to avoid stagnation. In a field characterized by secrets and mystery where do new ideas come from and how are they realized? And what role does magic play in the realm of the broader expressive arts? Can it remain relevant in an era when movies, video games, and the internet offer heightened experiences that were not earlier available. A panel of four innovative and accomplished magicians, Steve Cohen, Joshua Jay, Eric Jones, and Todd Robbins will address these and many other questions in Beyond Amazing: Creativity and Innovation in the World of Magic, a panel discussion with demonstrations of relevant effects, presented November 17, 2011, at 6 p.m. at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. The program will be moderated by photographer and writer Herb Scher. The event will be held in the Library’s Bruno Walter Auditorium, 40 Lincoln Center Plaza. Admission is free.

Read the full press release for this upcoming panel discussion here [...]

THIS SHOW IS NOW COMPLETELY SOLD-OUT

It’s the dream of any performer to stand on-stage at Carnegie Hall, presenting what they’ve trained their entire life to perfect.

I’ll have my chance on January 12, 2012, and I’d love it if you would share this momentous evening with me.

Carnegie Hall has three performance venues – I’ll be performing in their most intimate: Weill Recital Hall. Tickets went on sale this morning at 11:00am, and the box office tells me that they had people queuing up on the phones, waiting for the sale to begin.

This is a one-night only performance of my stage show “Theater of Wonder” – which is entirely different from “Chamber Magic,” now in its eleventh year at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. If you’ve been to my smaller show and want to see more magic, “Theater of Wonder” is for you.

Tickets are available at the Carnegie Hall box office (57th Street and Seventh Avenue), through CarnegieCharge at 212-247-7800, or online [...]

Chamber Magic will be running tonight (August 26) as planned, but I have decided to follow Broadway’s lead and have cancelled all three shows tomorrow (August 27), at 2pm, 7pm and 9pm. If you are a ticketholder to one of these shows, please contact OvationTix to reschedule your tickets to a future performance date. OvationTix [...]

Last night’s audience at the Waldorf was fun, even for me. After the 9pm show, two ladies made a quick video and raved about the show. They are top executives at a Swiss watch company. Enjoy!

Quick: let’s play an association game.
When I say “Washington DC in April,” what’s the first thing that comes to mind?

Cherry blossoms? Nope. Rain showers? Nu-uh.

The correct answer? “Chamber Magic.” I’m excited to announce that I’ll be giving four special shows in Washington DC during the first week of April.

I don’t tour the show too often, so this may be the only time for you (or your family) to experience magic in Washington. And lord knows that Washington could use some magic!

Ever since I was a boy magician, I’ve dreamed of [...]

Yesterday marked my first site visit to Carnegie Hall, where I am planning to present my new stage show at the end of 2011. This is a major paradigm shift for me – a close-up magician – to appear on the giant stage. Just look at this panorama view that I snapped on my camera [...]

The Jewish Museum in New York contacted me several months ago to entertain at a private dinner for their Chairman of the Board, Museum Director, and top donors, following the opening of the museum’s new Houdini exhibition. The dinner was held last night in a Park Avenue duplex apartment on Manhattan’s upper east side. I [...]

I will be receiving a special award – The Medal of Honor for Magic -  from the National Arts Club on October 5. Presenters at this exclusive event will include Mark Levy and legendary talk show host Dick Cavett. I hope you’ll be able to join me and my friends on this special evening. Although [...]

My friend Peter Greenberg, the travel expert for CBS television, created and narrated this Chamber Magic promo video. My 10 year old son said, “It looks like a movie preview!” Have a look, and please leave comments…

To celebrate Father’s Day, I invited my two children, Alex (age 10) and June (age 5) to perform at the Waldorf in Chamber Magic last night. It was their debut performance, and they did an amazing job! In this post, I’ve added a photo-essay and two videos of their world-premiere.

Sharing the stage with my children was, to me, the best Father’s Day present I could ever imagine.

Here is a video I made that provides a visual story for Google searching information about Chamber Magic. Learn how you can make your own video, too, for free.

Vanity Fair Daily talked with me about the history of salon magic, the connection between certain tricks and the internet, and where this ancient art might just be headed. This intensive interview took place at [...]

According to the National Theater in Washington DC, “The day when everyone dressed formally to go to the theatre has passed.” Despite being a historic theater – one that every U.S. president has attended since 1835 – the National has relaxed its dress code to allow patrons a freer choice. The theater’s website states, “To feel well-groomed, comfortable and good about yourself for a special occasion is really the guiding rule.”

I was upset to read this.

I believe that dressing up to go to the theater is a form of civility that should be resurrected. [...]

I have not mentioned this in print before, but since the very beginning my goal has always been to perform Chamber Magic for twenty years. There aren’t too many shows that have staying power. Not only magic shows, but theatrical shows in general. Ten years have flown by, and I want to keep Chamber Magic alive for ten more. Maybe I’m crazy, but I love performing this show. I’ve molded my life around it.[...]

(An online review by London mastermind Ian Rowland:) Is this the perfect magic show? If “perfection” means to state a clear aim and then to fulfill that aim with unerring accuracy, then yes, quite possibly, it is. So let us first be clear what the show is all about. “Before the days of radio and television,” runs the official programme for the show, “wealthy patrons would regularly invite entertainers into their homes, to delight small gatherings of family and friends. In those sophisticated, friendly environs, the living room became the stage, and the audience looked gleefully on, mere inches from the show.” Steve Cohen, largely inspired by the “salon” magic of such heroes as Hofzinser and Houdin, aims to re-create this experience for today’s audiences. Bullseye! [...]

(An online review by the erudite Dustin Stinett:) Have you ever wondered what it must have been like to attend an evening of conjuring in Johann Nepomuk Hofzinser’s intimate salon? While I doubt Steve Cohen would ever compare his own performances to that of Hofzinser’s (and we will never know precisely what that experience was like), “Chamber Magic” certainly must have a similar quality: At the very least, it is one of the closest entertainments available today that hails back to those genteel times, when people had no other option but to leave their homes, or invite performers into them, to enjoy an evening of escapism. [...]

Steve Cohen does not have the marquee name of a David Copperfield, David Blaine or Penn & Teller. What he does have, at 39, is Chamber Magic, five shows a weekend at the plush suite in the Waldorf-Astoria where Crown Prince Sultan of Saudi Arabia stays when in town. Mr. Cohen’s specialty is parlor magic, fusing close-up maneuvers and tricks with common objects for small audiences. He models himself after conjurers who entertained the aristocracy in European salons in the 1800s. He does not saw women or make elephants vanish. [...]

George Schindler, the beloved Dean of the Society of American Magicians, wrote a nice column about parlor magic shows in his monthly column in M-U-M magazine. I was delighted to host the Dean and his wife Nina to my show at the Waldorf-Astoria last year, and he wrote a kind review in his column this month (March 2010). Thanks George! [click title to read the review...]

I was invited to entertain 125 guests last night at a private dinner celebrating Comcast’s new ownership of NBC Universal. All the heavy hitters of the two companies were there, including Jeff Zucker (NBC president), Ralph Roberts (Comcast founder), and Brian Roberts (Comcast CEO).

NBC television featured a segment this week titled “Meet the Millionaires’ Magician” on their luxury program, LX New York. Have a look.

Billionaires, millionaires, media personalities, and other distinguished guests joined forces to support the Mercy Corps Action Center to End World Hunger on December 8, 2009 at the Magic4Mercy Benefit.
I presented a one-hour show that was well-received by business and community leaders, actors, fashion designers, and other luminaries including billionaire Steven A. Cohen, Founder of SAC Capital, and his wife Alexandra, who both served on the Honorary Committee for the event.

Just as singers have their favorite songs, magicians have our favorite tricks.

One of my all-time favorites is Think-a-Drink. The proper title of this routine is Any Drink Called For, and has also been known as The Bar Act. I’ve been performing this routine in my shows for the past eight years, but it has existed in various forms for over a century. The trick is so old, it’s new again.

Well-known magician, author, and all-around bright guy Joshua Jay wrote a lovely review of Chamber Magic on his blog today.

Here is a television interview I did with Mike Schneider on his Night Talk program, on Bloomberg Television.

PR Newswire ran a press release about my upcoming Magic4Mercy charity event, and as a courtesy, put my publicity photo and website information on the Thomson Reuter’s billboard in Times Square. It cycled several times each hour for several days. Talk about larger than life! My show is pretty small-scale, and never in a million [...]

Back in August 2007, the popular radio host Joan Hamburg did an extensive broadcast about Chamber Magic at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. She and her daughter Liz spoke about the show for about 8 or 9 minutes. I recently figured out how to record and edit an MP3 file, and am delighted to offer this broadcast [...]

A recent guest at my Waldorf show introduced himself as a relative of the great old-time magician, Max Malini. According to the gentleman, his great aunt’s second husband was Malini. A few weeks later, he sent me a piece of memorabilia from their family scrapbook – Malini’s calling card.

This image was drawn by the world-famous tenor, Enrico Caruso.

Please visit my fully-redesigned website: chambermagic.com We’ve tweaked the user interface, and added three new pages: Media Appearances, Win The Crowd Book, and Multimedia Gallery. I still have many more media articles and performance photos to upload – they will be coming soon. In the meantime, there’s still a lot to see, and you can [...]

I am in the early stages of organizing a tour of my show Chamber Magic. In 2010, I plan to tour the show to several cities around the world, in addition to my regular schedule at the Waldorf-Astoria in NYC. What other cities/countries would you like to see me in? Please click HERE to take [...]

You are cordially invited to attend Magic4Mercy, a benefit performance for the Action Center to End World Hunger (http://actioncenter.org), December 8, 2009

The Waldorf-Astoria hotel has, over the past 100 years, had many magic acts play within its hallowed walls. Thanks to the Conjuring Arts Research Center, I have located many references to the famous magicians who have entertained in the Waldorf. The hotel used to be located at 34th and Fifth Avenue (the current site of [...]

Once you’ve flown on a private jet, there’s no going back. I just landed in Cancun, on a Bombadier Challenger 605. And it’s all thanks to card tricks. My flight bag is loaded with six decks of Tally-Ho cards, a purseful of antique silver dollars, one red silk hanky and two false thumbs. Try explaining [...]

A major highlight in my performing career took place on April 26, 2009. The Waldorf-Astoria’s Director of Diplomatic Affairs invited me to entertain Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, of Saudi Arabia. The Crown Prince and his royal court were staying in the Waldorf Towers during an extended visit to New York. After [...]

For those who care to read, here is my bio. It’s what my manager sends out to media folks and potential clients. STEVE COHEN BIO Steve Cohen, The Millionaires’ Magician has perhaps the world’s most exclusive clientele – royalty, the ultra-rich and Hollywood superstars – who regularly invite him to perform at their private events. [...]

Here are some of the places you may have met me. My manager compiled a long laundry list of places I’ve presented Chamber Magic. For those who care to read, here is a list of: luxury hotels, resorts, yachts, mansions, private clubs, 
museums, opera houses, and restaurants where I’ve “magished.” RESORTS Boca Raton Resort & [...]

I’m holding an important benefit event on Tuesday, December 8th at 7:00 p.m. –    Magic 4 Mercy.  Proceeds from the evening, generated by tax deductible ticket sales, will benefit Mercy Corps’ Action Center to End World Hunger, opened one year ago in Battery Park City. The Action Center’s parent is Mercy Corps, an international humanitarian [...]

In 2007, I was invited to be the featured performer at a high-society fundraiser in Manhattan. Two hundred very wealthy people were gathered in the ballroom of a private Park Avenue clubhouse, and I performed a modified version of my Chamber Magic show. Having presented this show over 2000 times by that point, I felt [...]

Over the past ten years, I’ve met nearly a quarter of a million people (!) in my little show at the Waldorf-Astoria. Now you and I can finally talk to each other – I’m opening the doors to my magical parlor to you. Please follow my new blog – this is the first post. I’ll [...]