Rocco

This Jersey boy has done pretty good for the son of Italian immigrants who came to Paterson, New Jersey in search of the American Dream. The legendary master magician Slydini took Rocco under his wing and tutored the young novice, and it shows in the precision and deliberate pace Rocco establishes in every performance. The defining moment of his career came when he picked up a copy of Bobo’s Modern Coin Magic and discovered some of the lost arts of pure manipulation.

Rocco developed that mastery into a style that has become his signature throughout the world. In 1986 he won the coveted Golden Lion Award at the Las Vegas Desert Seminar — but that was only the beginning. Rocco became the first American ever to win at two FISM World Championships, taking third in Micromagic at Yokohama in 1994 and Most Original Act at Stockholm in 2006. Add the Merlin Award, two Manhattan Association of Cabarets awards, and nine Academy of Magical Arts nominations across four separate categories, and you begin to see the shape of it. That launched the never-ending tour that has become Rocco’s life, taking him to every corner of the world. Once you’ve seen him you’ll understand why.

Country: USA

Tina Lenert

Tina Lenert does something almost nobody else in magic attempts: she performs without saying a single word, and leaves the audience in tears. Her signature piece — known the world over simply as “The Mop” — is a small, wordless story about a cleaning woman and her mop, and it is routinely named among the most beautiful acts ever created in this art.

It came out of an unusual path. Tina studied classical guitar, played electric guitar in a high school band called the Leftovers, trained as a harpist, and was a founding member of the L.A. Mime Company before she ever thought to combine pantomime with conjuring into what she calls “fantasy magic.” The Academy of Magical Arts voted her Stage Magician of the Year, and she has been a beloved fixture at the Magic Castle in Hollywood for decades.

Real magic is about storytelling. That’s a more formidable task than many magicians are willing to attempt. Most magic invites you to ask how it was done. Tina Lenert’s magic never gives you the chance — you are too busy feeling something.

Country: USA

Lorenzo Clark

Lorenzo Clark has spent a career proving that the fastest route to astonishment runs directly through the funny bone. He came up the hard way — comedy clubs across the country, cruise ship showrooms, and a long stint at Houston’s legendary Magic Island, the kind of rooms where you learn to hold a crowd or you learn to find other work.

These days he is a fixture on the Las Vegas variety scene, currently appearing in “The Big Little Variety Show” at the Alexis Park, and he has performed for the toughest audience there is — other magicians — in the Close-Up Gallery of the Magic Castle, including a memorable tribute to the great Albert Goshman. Lorenzo’s close-up sets carry the timing of stand-up and the chops of a lifetime professional, which is a combination you do not run into often. Sit close. He works fast, and the laugh tends to arrive about half a second before you realize something impossible just happened.

Country: USA

Suzanne

There is one line on the Academy of Magical Arts roster that no other woman has ever matched: Suzanne is the only woman ever voted Close-Up Magician of the Year by the members of the Magic Castle in Hollywood. Ask anyone who has watched her work that room and they will tell you the award had nothing to do with novelty and everything to do with the ten fingers on the end of her hands.

Suzanne’s magic is built on character and story rather than on flourish. Routines with names like “A Mother’s Love,” “Coming Home” and “The Journey” are constructed the way a playwright constructs a scene, so that the impossible thing waiting at the end lands somewhere other than your eyes. Magicians study her for a technique that is impeccable and almost entirely invisible. Everybody else simply forgets they are watching a classic trick like the Cups and Balls. A standing ovation in a room that seats fewer than seventy people is a rare thing. Suzanne gets them.

Stuart MacDonald

Like so many of the gold medal winners who appear at SPELLBINDERS, Stuart has won a lot of awards. He has taken multiple gold medals from the International Brotherhood of Magicians as well as the Society of American Magicians. In fact, he holds the distinction of winning more awards in a single international contest than any magician in history.

The reason can be found in the foundation of his magic, which is unabashedly hyper-theatrical. He weaves a story so compelling — and so inexplicable — that the audience is pulled into his crazy, impossible, nonsensical, mysterious world before they know what has happened to them. That is more or less what Penn & Teller said when Stuart appeared on their hit show “Fool Us,” and Stuart took the title of the show as a direct invitation. Both of them freely admitted they could not imagine how he accomplished the feats he presented, and they had to confess — he fooled them. It is no surprise that Stuart MacDonald wins People’s Choice Awards wherever he appears, because above all else he is determined to entertain an audience with things they have never seen before.

Mark Kalin

Mark Kalin came up through the Long Beach Mystics, the Southern California club of teenage wannabe wizards that has been turning out working professionals for half a century, and he took his cue from Doug Henning — a true original, he says, who brought the whole art back to life before anyone had heard of David Copperfield. What Kalin built on that is a career in illusion at the largest scale anyone has attempted.

He and his partner Jinger were voted Magicians of the Year by the Academy of Magical Arts, an honor they share with Copperfield, David Blaine and Penn & Teller. He founded Supreme Entertainment Productions in 1997 and Majikal Productions in 2001, and the shows that came out of them — “Before Your Very Eyes” at Trump’s Marina in Atlantic City, “Carnival of Wonders” with Jeff Hobson, “Illusionarium” at the Reno Hilton — sent Magic Magazine reaching back to Le Roy, Talma and Bosco for a comparison. Reno got the biggest of it: in “Carnival of Wonders” he and Jinger vanished an American Airlines jumbo jet twice a night for two years, still the largest live illusion ever staged. On Broadway he is The Showman in “The Illusionists: Turn of the Century,” performing the original sawing in half.

The Enchantress

Jinger Leigh grew up in Connecticut riding the train into New York for dance class at thirteen, and she was a professional dancer at fifteen — touring with Disney, sharing stages with The Beach Boys and Tony Bennett. On the first of October, 1991, she was lead dancer in a production in Guam. A magician named Mark Kalin was on the same bill. She watched his act, walked up to him afterward and proposed they work together. She signed on for a short contract, fell in love inside a month, never left, and married him.

She has been anything but an assistant ever since. Jinger conceives her own illusions and performs her own material, built on presentation for the stage rather than on sleight of hand — a deliberate artistic choice, not a limitation. Broadway knows her as The Conjuress in “The Illusionists: Turn of the Century,” where she performs a floating sphere first built in 1910 and rebuilt so that it drifts out over the audience. She likes to point out that magic was not always a man’s business — Adelaide Herrmann and Toma headlined once. Watch her work and you will wonder why that ever changed.

Roman Spinale

For the past two decades Roman Spinale has been sharing his brand of magic and humor across the world. He has been featured on CBS television, San Francisco’s Edwardian Ball, and in 2014 held the coveted honor of being the first resident magician at the world renowned and three Michelin starred Ristorante Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence, Italy. Back in America, Roman gained a reputation as one of the Bay Area’s premier underground close-up magicians during his years as the house conjuror at Curio Nightclub located in San Francisco’s Mission District. It was at Curio where Roman first began performing his own original magic creations which have now become a staple of his touring repertoire. Today Roman can be seen performing his brand of tiny miracles at colleges, corporate events, and private parties everywhere.

Country: ITALY

Larry Wilson

The man who talked all of these people into coming to Reno is, when he isn’t running a nonprofit, an Emmy-nominated comedy magician and the Forte Awards Comedy Magician of the Year. Larry starred in “WONDERLAND” at Harrah’s Reno, has spent decades making audiences laugh in showrooms around the world, created the iconic comedy-magic sequence for the movie “Airplane” with Leslie Nielsen and once vanished Jimmy Kimmel’s Guillermo from the Pinata of Doom, live, on Hollywood Boulevard for a national television spot.

He also founded this festival. SPELLBINDERS began as a way to put something back into the Washoe County libraries after budget cuts, and it has grown into a free, week-long international festival reaching six counties. Larry is quick to point out that the festival costs its audience nothing and always will. He is considerably less likely to point out that he is the reason it exists. So we will.