Be a Part of the Magic!
Master of Illusion Michael Grandinetti Appears at iPlay America Saturday, April 14 at 7:00 PM!
1. What will be special about your appearance at iPlay America? “I’m very excited for our upcoming show at iPlay America. While we’ll be bringing some of our larger illusions, including one of our levitations, we’ve created a brand new interactive show for this year’s tour that features magic that completely involves the audience – all throughout the show. The magic will happen in their hands, with their borrowed objects, and, at some points, the entire audience will even participate in the magic together, at the same time. I hope this will be a very memorable night for everyone there.”
2. How did your lifelong fascination with magic begin? “I’m very lucky that I found what I love to do early in life. I got my first magic set for Christmas when I was five years old, and that was it, I was hooked. I knew that magic was what I wanted to do with my life. So, everything after that was about pursuing my goal of being a magician. For me, there is no greater thrill than amazing an audience.”
3. Watching your performances on the internet, it becomes very apparent that you have a love for levitation tricks and illusions, it seems to be a trademark of your body of work… ”I’ve always been drawn to levitation illusions. When I was a kid, my Dad would take me to the magic store in downtown Pittsburgh, where I grew up, and I remember always being fascinated by this silver floating ball that they had in the glass counter. So, it’s always been a focus of mine. Since those early days, levitation has become one of our signature effects, and we’ve had the opportunity to perform many different versions, from levitating myself in the center of a football stadium while surrounded by 70,000 people, to levitating members of the audience.”
4. Were there any Magicians or Illusionists that were your idols/heroes? “There really wasn’t one singular person that inspired me, but I was really interested in watching and learning from every magic performance that I could. Growing up, I would wait for the TV listings to come out each week in the newspaper and I’d go through line by line searching for magicians on any show, and then set the VCR so that I could watch. I never wanted to emulate their performances, it was important to me to have my own style, but being able to see different styles and scales of magic was always very interesting.”
5. You were inspired by magicians you saw on television and now you are a renowned TV/Magician… how does that feel? “From very early on, it was my dream to combine magic with television, and I absolutely love having the chance to do that. Television has always been the best way to share what you do with as many people as possible and it’s been very important to me to give audiences the best impression of magic possible, as I think it is a very deep, powerful, moving art form. I spend a lot of time choosing and preparing the illusions for our TV appearances. They have to be very visual and I always design the presentations to try to give the home viewer the very best view of the magic, even better than if they were in the live audience. We rehearse our illusions so that the cameras can move behind and even around them, 360 degrees.”
6. What was your first big break on television? “The first time I performed on national television was for NBC’s ‘The World’s Most Dangerous Magic’. It was a special that featured seven magicians from around the world. I was still in college when we filmed that and it was exciting to be the youngest performer on the show. On the special, we performed my ‘Spike Tower Escape’, where I’m chained to a frame between two walls of razor sharp, foot long, steel spikes. The spikes are connected to an hourglass. When the sand runs through the hourglass, the spikes are released and fly towards me at over 50 mph. To make it even more dangerous, they lit the spikes on fire, and covered me in gasoline and kerosene. It was definitely a performance I won’t forget!”
7. Tell us about your early magic career…“I started doing shows professionally at the age of twelve, for all types of events around Pittsburgh – company events, riverboat cruises, amusement parks. Growing up, it was always my goal to go beyond what someone my age might be doing, so every year I pushed myself to take my show further, adding more production elements, and more magic. By 16, I had started adding larger illusions to my show. As a matter of fact, when I was about 19, I developed one of the pieces that we featured recently on the CW, a story routine where a life-sized painting is brought to life. It’s still one of my favorites. I was always very passionate about magic and, to this day, I love what I do.”
8. What was the greatest moment of your career so far? “When you’re doing what you love to do, every moment is pretty special. But, there have definitely been some experiences that stand out. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to perform at The White House, it was pretty surreal – with the President and his family standing only about 25 feet away. I’ve also really enjoyed our stadium shows. Walking out onto those fields in front of 70,000 people is always extremely exciting, no matter how many times you do it. It was also a thrill and an honor to be the first magician ever invited to perform in the Washington DC Fourth of July Parade, where we levitated a dancer above a float as we moved down Constitution Avenue. There were over 250,000 people watching that day, waving their American flags, it was something I’ll always remember.”
9. Do you have any new tricks up your sleeve? “I’m constantly working on new ideas for our show, it’s one of my favorite things to do. Every year, I’m in competition with myself to try to make that year’s show better than the last. It’s a fun process! I keep notebooks and computer records of ideas and am adding to the list all the time. One new illusion, that I’m just putting the finishing touches on, involves dividing an audience member in half. For years, magicians have divided their assistants in half, but we’re going to be doing the illusion with an unrehearsed, and unsuspecting, member of the audience. And, in the end, they’ll have no idea how it’s done. I can’t wait for people to see this one!”
10. You make your magic look effortless and the audiences are amazed, but the truth is that every piece you do requires intense amounts of practice and rehearsal. How much time do you spend practicing? “When I’m working on something new, I‘ll practice every day for many hours. Once a piece becomes a part of our show, we use every show as a testing ground for continual improvement. We have pieces that have been on our show for ten years and we’re still finding ways to make them better. Giving audiences the very best magic that I can is always my goal.”