STEVE COHEN PROFILED IN THE NY TIMES
Steve Cohen is profiled in a piece from the NY Times that I've been expecting for the last two weeks thanks to a heads up from Steve.
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. The audience is capped at about 50 people, who pay $75 each ($100 for the front row). They are expected to dress well. And two or three private events a month, for which he gets $10,000 to $20,000.
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.
“He works in the style of a soiree at the home of some Vanderbilt or Rittenhouse, where you might expect an evening of light opera but have lucked into an expert magician,”Teller, the silent member of Penn & Teller, wrote in an e-mail message.
The Millionaires’ Magician moniker came about eight years ago, when he was brainstorming with Mark Levy, a marketing strategist and amateur magician, about raising his visibility. He had always cultivated the upper crust, and, in a brief profile, Avenue magazine mentioned that he was sort of the millionaires’ magician. Be that, Mr. Levy said. Mr. Cohen worried it might limit who would hire him. Mr. Levy said, “You’ll get the right calls.”
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