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The thing about watching Steve Cohen perform a magic trick is that no matter how closely you think you’re watching his hands and how easy you think it’ll be to discover what makes the trick work, it's impossible. Cohen is a masterful magician whose sleight of hand work defies logic and inspires awe in even the surliest New Yorkers.
This weekend, Cohen’s solo magic show Chamber Magic will celebrate 25 years in New York City—a rare feat of endurance and skill for any performance. Donning his signature tuxedo, Cohen has performed mystifying parlor magic for royalty, celebrities, world leaders and everyday New Yorkers, earning him the nickname The Millionaires' Magician. It’s a show you've got to see to believe—and once you see it, you won't believe your eyes. Chamber Magic is now the longest-running solo magic show in New York City, and Cohen sat down with Time Out New York to talk about the occasion and his journey to this point.
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The magic bug bit Cohen at an early age while growing up in Westchester County in the 1970s. Cohen’s great-uncle Nat Zuckerman was an amateur magician who would perform tricks at family parties, much to 6-year-old Cohen’s fascination. Keep in mind that this was the 1970s—a different era when people’s homes were often filled with cigarette smoke during parties.
“When my uncle was doing magic tricks, if he made a coin, for example, disappear, to my little boy’s brain, it looked like it vanished into a puff of smoke,” Cohen tells us. “So I really felt like this is a magical man. It wasn’t just a guy who was hiding the coin in the back of his fingers, it really looked like it disappeared into smoke like a wizard, so that inspired me first.”
His uncle graciously took on Cohen as a young protégé, brilliantly deciding that he would only teach Cohen one trick at a time. The young student had to master one trick before graduating to the next. He first mastered a trick with disappearing pocket knives, a trick that still dazzles today.
As he continued in the craft, Cohen saw a magician named Doug Henning on TV, and he was enraptured by this “hippie magician” with his passion for magic, especially his mastery close-up tricks. Cohen soon got his chance to perform for an audience, just like Henning. At the age of 10, he got hired to do magic for a local child’s fourth birthday party. He earned $25 and realized the thrill of performing for an audience, so much so that his dad helped him put an ad in the Pennysaver offering his magic services for birthday parties.
Between the ages of 10 and 18, Cohen performed hundreds of magic shows, earning money to buy even cooler magic apparatus and books. He became “super hyper focused about magic,” going to the renowned Tannen’s Magic Camp during the summer where he learned from icons like David Copperfield, Harry Lorayne and Criss Angel to name a few.
Eventually, with his parents’ urging, Cohen went to college to study psychology at Cornell University. During his schooling, he lived in Japan for a year and got hired after graduation to do magic for the high society of Tokyo on the 52nd floor of the regal Park Hyatt Hotel with a view of Mount Fuji in the background. After returning to America in the ‘90s, Cohen decided to take a “regular day job” working in Japanese interpreting for technical documents, but he quickly realized “this is not for me.”
“As an artist, I really felt like I needed to put that to the side and make magic my full time occupation,” he says.
But Cohen was careful about the decision, specifically looking for steady magic work in New York City, so he could stay close to family—not an easy task in this industry.
He started out in the year 2000 by performing magic in a friend’s West Village apartment. That is, until the shows became so popular, they worried they’d draw the landlord’s ire. Cohen next moved to a commercial venue—the National Arts Club—where he performed for a few months until that contract ran out. By chance, an audience member with a connection to the Waldorf Astoria convinced the management to give Cohen a chance with his show. After seeing his performance, they were so impressed, they allowed him to rent a resplendent suite every weekend for magic shows. Cohen performed there for 17 years and 4,750 shows, entertaining rock-and-roll stars, Nobel Prize winners and famed athletes, until the hotel closed in 2017.
Faced with searching for another new venue, Cohen worried about finding somewhere that could live up to the same energy of the Waldorf Astoria. He ended up receiving offers from several hotels in Manhattan and chose Lotte New York Palace.
“The hotel is another character in the play that I'm putting on.”
“The hotel is another character in the play that I'm putting on. ... This is not just a set, this is actually another character. People are coming to see the venue as well as the show in that venue,” Cohen explains. “It's a step back in time to recreate the parlor entertainment of the 19th century but with a modern flavoring.”
Seeing Chamber Magic at the Lotte Palace is a special experience. Guests are asked to wear cocktail attire for this elegant evening of conjuring, mind-reading, sleight of hand—entertainment that delighted New Yorkers in the early 1900s just as much as it does today. There's one trick in particular called “Think-A-Drink” that tends to leave guests gobsmacked.
“My favorite to perform is ‘Think-a-Drink’ because I feel like Harry Potter,” he says. “The audience thinks of whatever drink that they want, and then I pour it from my silver tea kettle.”
Audience members can even ask for a specific drink—say Angel's Envy bourbon, Earl Grey tea, Strawberry Nesquick or blue Gatorade. The only requests he's very reasonably denied are: mother’s milk, Pepto Bismol and human blood.
“My favorite to perform is ‘Think-a-Drink’ because I feel like Harry Potter.”
After 25 years, growing from a living room in the West Village to an elegant salon in midtown, the charm of Chamber Magic has endured for audiences and Cohen himself.
“I feel like the audience is entertaining me. That's what keeps me going,” he says. “My entertainment for the weekend is this audience. They think they’re being entertained by me; I’m actually being entertained by their reactions to my stimulus.”
Cohen's original teacher, Uncle Nat, passed away before he could see his nephew become a professional magician. To this day, the Chamber Magic program offers thanks to Nat Zuckerman.
“I like to think that he’s watching over me in every show,” Cohen says, “because I'm really doing it to honor him.”
How to learn magic
If Cohen inspires you to learn some tricks, he recommends meeting other magicians face-to-face to show them what you’ve learned and request feedback. Also try tutorials on YouTube, magic forums, and reading books. Speaking of books, Cohen has several, including Win the Crowd: Unlock the Secrets of Influence, Charisma, and Showmanship; Max Malini: King of Magicians, Magician of Kings; and Confronting Magic. It’s also important to get out and practice.
“You have to be out there performing so you don't simply become an armchair magician,” Cohen says.
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Steve Cohen’s favorite NYC things to do
When he’s not practicing his craft or coming up with new tricks, this Upper West Sider and six-time New York City marathon runner can often be found in his sneakers pounding the pavement. He often runs in Central Park with his goldendoodle, Coco, pictured above. In addition to running in the park, he’ll turn his runs into scavenger hunts, stopping by spots like Houdini’s house, Max Malini’s home and the pool where Houdini practiced his underwater breath-holding.
“I'll go around and find things that are of interest to me in my field,” he says, “and make New York City like a scavenger hunt.”
How to see Chamber Magic
The Chamber Magic 25th Anniversary event is set for Friday, March 28, and that night’s show is already sold out. But you can get tickets to Chamber Magic on upcoming weekends with dates listed here. Tickets typically start around $183.
The show is hosted at the Lotte New York Palace hotel at 50th and Madison in Manhattan. Remember to dress up!