SHOWTIME IN LONDON !!! REVIEW OF THE 2019 EDITION OF THE SESSION
I attended last week end the 2019 edition of The Session in Heathrow, England, and here is a short review of it :
the incredible Mac King, surrounded by Luxembourg !
the incredible Mac King, surrounded by Luxembourg !
To my mind at least three distinctive features make The Session quite different from the very vast majority of the other magic conventions I attended :
– First of all The Session is organized by Vanishing Inc. – a magic company run by well known magicians Joshua Jay and Andi Gladwin – together with British mentalist Luke Jermay. Most of the time a magic convention would be set up by a magicians club, an association, some kind of group, but not here : everything relies on a commercial company.
– Then the three days are split in two distinct moments: The Event on Friday, which is devoted to mentalism and mental magic only, and The Session proper on Saturday and Sunday. Some of the speakers would then be on stage twice, such as Jared Kopf (Texas, USA) for instance who did an exposé on tarot reading on Friday and a trully baffling lecture on Dai Vernon on Sunday.
– Then the unmissable dealer room would open only on the very last day. But that does not necessarily mean you will manage to save your money the days before, far from it! The Vanishing Inc. booth never closes and the performers are of course allowed to sell their lecture notes.
Now let’s talk about the most important thing of these three days : the shows and lectures themselves. Even though I must admit that I felt my eyes closing on a few occasions, the overall impression is that the artists delivered high caliber speeches and performances. Dani Daortiz literaly brought the house down on two occasions (lecture and gala show) and got two well deserved standing ovations. And what can we say about Mac King, except that next time I am in Las Vegas I will not leave the city without having been to his show, for sure! For the rest of it, I got baffled by Marc Kernstein both really devious and highly original ideas, I was left speechless by juggler Florian Brooks and enjoyed every bit of Ben Seidman‘s amazing one man show.
El maestro Dani Daortiz
Ben Seidman, pickpocket and sleight of hand artist
Jared Kopf, or reincarnated Dai Vernon?
MacKing, 500 shows a year 20 years in a row at Harrah’s
But of course a magic convention is also (mostly?) the perfect occasion to catch up with old friends, meet new people and spend time with one’s favorite artists. Thanks a lot to Pit Hartling (Germany) for instance with whom I had a nice chat on the very last evening. As far as the other magicians are concerned, well if you were there you could have seen among others Dynamo, John Archer, Guy Hollingworth, Roberto Giobbi, Denis Behr, Peter Turner, Titanas, Ben Earl, and so on …
… see you next year !
