Peter concentrated on the “Why what who” in this lecture asking questions like; Why am I interested in it? Why would anyone else want to see it?
He explained more on the way we interact on what we do, for instance the way magicians vanish an reappear a coin, how we should imagine exactly what we are doing in the effect, he explained this with vanishing a coin to dust, imagining the dust, forming the dust back into a coin again.
He also took the entire audience through his “phoenix” routine, a burnt and stored napkin, each member of the audience having a paper napkin to follow along. From the previous nights gala show the ring in box was also explained.
Peters lecture was good and covered a number of effects and thoughts into performing, and followed on nicely from his previous close up show.

John Lovick
John did an excellent set to open the close up gala show. Transforming money from spectators in larger denominations, before transforming to blank sheets. A lovely woes prediction effect was given by collecting words from the audience, based around the “fact” that one of the audience members was an ex girlfriend, that departed on bad terms, John got some woderful comedy before the words were revealed in a break up love poem in an envelope.
John also tried his hand at an effect from Magic magazine by getting a specator to read the instructions out aloud. The effect was a very clever ring vanish, the ring apparently found in the ring. Of being the wrong ring. A second ring borrowed from another audience memer turned out in fact to be the original ring, and yw ring in re box being the second ring, very clever and magical

Peter Samelson
Peter presented a number of effects based around stories, an invasion of the body snatchers where cards transformed into the same card wen rubbed against each other, an effect based around the story of the Pheonix, a signed tissue burnt and restored like a pheonix rising from the ashes.
peter finaihed with “smoke”, where coins appeared and vanish in a smoke filled glass, coins where produced from smoke and silks, a rock for the male audience member and many jumbo cpi s for the lady, a final super large jumbo dollar was produced on the off beat from silk.

Denis Behr
“Herbert” the rubber band helped find named and selected cards, before a number of Oil and water effects where performed, each more impossible than the last, firstly “hands off” with no visible moves (hands off) through to an almost impossible looking version where the cards were hold punched and pinned in red black order so it was impossible to change their order. After they were indeed back to all red, all black the entire shuffled deck was shown to be to sorted back into Red Black order, as an extra kicker the deck was shaken and shown to be shuffled deck.

Andrew Goldenhersh
Possibly for me one of a number of highlights from the weekend, Andrew Goldenhersh turned an origami butterfly into a real one, a gorgeous moment of magic.
He then did a visually stunning slow coins across/coin matrix set to music, coins almost visibly moving when covered by his hands.
As a final effect Andrew did a wonderful needles an thread from mouth routine. Assisted by Ian rowland, and getting comedy moments from the latex gloves and “elmo” hand puppet Ian Rowland was now sporting.
An excellent set that got a huge round of applause from the audience.

Ken Figg Kindly provided some information on the Sunday Morning Richard Kaufman Workshop.

Fifteen people arrived early at 9 am on Sunday morning, some more bright and bushy tailed than others. Even Richard admitted that he did not usually function well at that time in the morning.

He started off with a performance and explanation of a Frank Garcia effect called Elongated Lady, to be found in Richard’s Almanac Vol 1.  In a very candid moment, Richard explained that he was not known for his snappy patter, as he does not usually perform, for other people, but mainly for his own amusement.

He then invited questions, and asked if anyone had specific slights that they wanted to discuss.  Answers ranged from variations of double lift,top change and the pass.  These were discussed in great detail as well as amusing anecdotes relating to the Professor’s (Dai Vernon) take on naturalness of each slight, as well as variations from Charlie Miller, Nate Leipzig and Cliff Green.  During the discussion he let slip that he was considering publishing Cliff Green’s Professional Card Magic.

All in all, a very enjoyable workshop, considering the time of the morning.

John Lovick started his lecture by explaining the bottle production from last nights comedy show (and why it didn’t work quite how he wanted it to!). It was an excellent session on producing a full bottle from almost any type of suit (three piece, double breasted, or single breasted). John gave an excellent demonstration on exactly how to do the moves, and on the things to watch out for during it.

He walked everyone through his bill switch that he does clean handed, and the switch that he settled on after exhausting almost every possible method for his ‘Switch’ book. Two lucky people also managed to pick up John ‘Switch’ book for a crazy price of £20!

Following this John ran through a good cards to pockets routine, and finished with a mental mathematical card trick, that wasn’t mathematical at all, a thought of card being found, from a deck that is eventually shown to be all blank.

In all a very good session, if only for the bottle production and the final card effect.

David Kaplan gave a good lecture that was based around magic, juggling and general performance skills, Possibly one of the most useful things I took from the lecture was the system that David uses for cueing and controlling his stage music, pure genius.

It involves a switch worked by magnets in his shoe, allowing him to stop, cue, and restart music by mearly bringing his feet together.

Richard Turner, followed his one man show from last night with an excellent lecture on card shifts, shuffles, hops, shifts and deals.

Watching Richard explain his work is, in part, more entertainment than a learning exercise. Watching someone so skilled with cards is a pleasure. I wont even start to think that I could the majority of what Richard explained in the session, but there were aspects of the session that I think anyone could learn from.

Even with Richard explaining the moves, even with him doing them in slow motion, some were still deceptive. For instance a shift that was done in picking up the cards, event when ‘exposed’ and done in slow motion, still looked like he was just picking up the cards.

It was an hour of pure self endulgence…