Maestro by John Shryock

Give your close-up and parlor magic a broader repertoire with Maestro, John Shryock’s book of routines, techniques, and performance insights. Audiences can see a borrowed quarter pass through a rolled dollar bill, or watch a half dollar change into other coins before returning to its original form.

• Card routines: Explore sequences that combine ambitious card, Triumph, and color-changing deck effects, plus routines that reveal selected cards in different ways.
• Coin magic: Learn routines featuring coin vanishes and appearances, transformations, and a reverse Matrix using four coins and four cards.
• Cups and Balls: Study Shryock’s takes on this classic effect, including a show-closing routine that ends with the production of four pieces of fruit.
• More close-up effects: The collection also includes a borrowed ring ending up inside a walnut and three coins assembling beneath two cards.
• Performance guidance: The lecture notes include illustrations, explanations, tips, and reflections on the thinking behind effective magic.

Shryock has performed professionally since 1984 in close-up, parlor, and illusion settings, including regular appearances at Warren and Annabelle’s Magic Club in Maui. The routines are described as packing flat, playing big, and resetting instantly, making the book relevant to working performers as well as magicians developing their repertoire.