The evening of 15 March 2013 was themed “Special Meeting” and attracted a turnout of 42 people at the function room of Bayview Hotel.

In this special meeting, we had some very special guests. Mr. William Gwee, who is today an authority on the early history of magic in Singapore, and Mr Jervals Choo and his collogues from the National Heritage Board (NHB). JC Sum and Magic Babe Ning,who have been very busy lately, also graced this evening with their presence.

John Teo, President of Ring115, and MC for the evening, kicked off the meeting magically by producing an oversized magic wand. He then introduced the guests and gave a brief overview of the evening’s program.

JC SUM and Ning talked about the Night Festival that would take place on 30 &31 August 2013.They would be the featured artists. JC also requested for articles and memorabilia on Singapore magic scene for contributions to the NHB.

John introduced William Gwee and his wife Rosie, and recounted their years at Ring 115. Mr. William Gwee took us through an interesting presentation highlighting the early magical history in Singapore from the turn of the 20th Century up to the 1950s.

The photographs shown created much excitement as they depicted some well known Singapore magicians and how they looked when they were very much younger.

JC Sum kicked off the evening’s performance with a repertoire of coin routines. He used the beautiful European Silver coins that he had gathered from his lecture tour in Europe. Magic Babe Ning followed up with a sexy take on the Russian roulette that had the entire audience on the edge of their seats.

There was no better performer to showcase the Great Wong’s Linking Ring Routine than Gician Tan, who also did his own selected card through net, and closed with snow storm in China. Alvin Terence Tan borrowed a deck of cards and performed a couple of mental routines with a spectator. He did a cool 4 Aces Production and found her chosen card.

The 20m minutes break provided an ambience for networking with members of the Singapore Heritage board and the magicians.

After the interval, our guests got to witness an Induction Performance by newcomer Donovan Tan. His repertoire included paper to bill, spoon and coin bend, and selected card in tic-tac box.

Our next performer, J K Tan, appropriately dressed in a laboratory overcoat, did some interesting magic with scientific principles. The truth was that some of the effects were based on science, but some were just pure magical tricks, and the audience was none the wiser! JK concluded with the card plunger that we learnt from the recent Jon Armstrong lecture. Baharudin caused an invisibly selected and signed card to materialize physically in the pocket of one of our members.

Satish Kumar introduced the use of ESP cards at the Duke University and proceeded to demonstrate how he had predicted the ESP design randomly chosen by a spectator. He then followed up with a performance of the classic Cups and Balls routine, explaining its rich history at the same time. At the end of the routine, baseballs made their appearances under the cups. Finally, a shot glass of drink was produced as a befitting close to an evening of entertaining magic.

Reported by

Satish Kumar