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Shin Lim is mastering his next trick: Stardom (Interview)

Shin Lim is mastering his next trick: Stardom (Interview)

A montage of Shin Lim’s winning season on NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” might reel off in a series of stunned faces, dropped jaws, and baffled adults squealing in wonder.

Olivia Munn’s mouth agape as Lim appears to turn one playing card into three, two, then none. Spice Girl Mel B pounding a table with childlike glee: “No, no, no, no!” Simon Cowell muttering: “Bloody hell, Shin. That was spooky.”

The montage would end with Lim, a Waltham resident at the time, being awarded the $1 million grand prize as gold confetti is raining down, the runners-up are hoisting him into the air, and host Tyra Banks is screaming over the cheers, “Shin Lim! The sexiest magician on the planet!”

But where that 2018 montage ends, Lim’s career begins.

The Acton-Boxborough High School graduate has gone on to perform a run with “The Illusionists” on Broadway, landed a Las Vegas residency at the Mirage hotel and casino in Las Vegas, married his sweetheart, Casey Thomas, in Hawaii, and returned to compete on the first-ever international “America’s Got Talent: The Champions” against a field of 50 past winners and fan faves, from Scotland to South Africa.

He won that, too.

He’s baffled Jimmy Fallon on “The Tonight Show,” made Kelly Clarkson squawk, wowed Ellen DeGeneres, Henry Winkler, Wanda Sykes, Jay Leno.

Now on his own national tour, “LIMitless,“ Lim, 28, performs on “The Today Show” Tuesday before heading to Medford for a sold-out show Wednesday at the Chevalier Theatre.

We recently talked tricks with the mind-blower, now based in Los Angeles.  READ MORE

By Lauren Daley for the Boston Globe…

Derek DelGaudio’s Genre-Bending Magic Show

Derek DelGaudio’s Genre-Bending Magic Show

By Sam Schube
Photo by Matteo Mobilio

Derek DelGaudio is, technically speaking, one of the best magicians in the world. But he’s spent the last few years putting on a mind-blowing stage show that’s equal parts conceptual art and social experiment. Here, with a little help from fan Stephen Colbert, director Frank Oz, and collaborator Glenn Kaino, he explains how the best parts of his work have nothing to do with actual magic.

Derek DelGaudio wanted to meet in New York City’s Washington Square Park, which should have ranked pretty low on any list of anxiety-inducing activities. And yet, when I got there, my heart started pounding. DelGaudio, a magician, had suggested the location, and it didn’t seem an unreasonable request. But as I entered the park ahead of our meeting, I started scrutinizing my fellow park-dwellers in a state of adrenalized attention. One woman seemed to point her phone at me. (She was FaceTiming someone). My own phone buzzed with a notification, and I nearly jumped out of my shoes. I’m generally an easygoing guy, but what I’d seen DelGaudio do a month prior in his one-man show, In & Of Itself, had put me in a distinctly paranoid mood. DelGaudio, widely considered one of the most talented magicians on the planet, had displayed such a casual facility for manipulation—for card tricks but also for knottier, weirder illusions that weren’t necessarily illusions at all—that I was convinced I was walking into some sort of trap. It had seemed so easy for him to tweak reality onstage, as if it were a product of the guy and not his stage show. I was expecting him to pull one over on me, and probably without my noticing it….   Read More..

https://www.gq.com/story/derek-delgaudio-magician-profile

David Copperfield is the highest paid magician in the world.. See the list..

David Copperfield is the highest paid magician in the world.. See the list..

While most people give up on magic tricks when they hit puberty, the fortunate few who persevere can wind up on a lucrative career path.

To put this into context, the highest paid magician, David Copperfield, earned far more in the last year than the highest paid TV actress, Sofia Vergara, and virtually the same amount as the highest-paid actor in the world Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnsonaccording to Forbes.

While Copperfield, a famed American illusionist, made an estimated $64m (£52m) in 2016, Johnson earned $64.5m (£53m) and Modern Family actress Vergara earned $43m (£35m) in the same period.

Copperfield, who has walked through the Great Wall of China, made the Statue of Liberty disappear and levitated over the Grand Canyon, is a near-billionaire. Forbes estimated his net worth at $800m (£654m) in 2013 and estimates him to be the most commercially successful magician in history.  Read more…

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/forbes-highest-paid-magicians-david-copperfield-a7381856.html