These ideas and near secrets that I keep in a cabinet, which I’ve owned almost since my childhood, are the ones that I want to reveal for the first time to you. I will be sending them along with these letters. Aside from presenting them to lay audiences, they are the tricks and routines I have used for making even the most knowledgeable magicians experience the wonderful and powerful effect of the impossible, as well as the emotion of the fascinating and the magical. As you probably know, it’s a specialty that Maestro Ascanio so rightly named “magic even for magicians,” which I have cultivated with love and passion.

I occasionally receive advance copies of effects, books or new products from my friends at Penguin magic with the request that – if I like something – I provide a short, punchy quote for marketing purposes.

So it was with “Letters From Juan”, a series of small booklets featuring the work of maestro Juan Tamariz in a friendly, informal style including personal thoughts and observations that perfectly frame his ingenious effects and methods alongside Juan’s signature warmth and humour.

But how can I offer an unbiased appraisal of this work when Juan is both the dearest of friends and a guiding light for my own love of magic?

How can I tell you how wonderful this material is or how valuable Juan’s thinking might be if I cannot avoid being influenced by my love for Juan and his magic?
The answer – of course – is that I cannot possibly offer an unbiased account of these wonderful and generous booklets but I can add my voice to the many others who will no doubt echo my enthusiasm for this project.

I am fortunate to spend many weeks every year with Juan and in Spain where I continue to be astonished by the passion and creativity the Spaniards have for magic. Over the past thirty years I have learned some of the effects in these booklets and performed them countless times and the old me – the me from not so long ago – might have mourned the “loss” of these secrets that have given me (and my audiences, I hope) great pleasure but today, having learned the value of sharing and generosity in magic, I am genuinely excited for those of you who will discover these beautiful ideas for the first time and make them your own.

I give this project my highest (and extremely biased) recommendation. Not every trick is for every performer but each is a lesson and each is a window into Juan’s way of thinking and I’ve had immense pleasure reading each of Juan’s letters; I sincerely hope you will share that experience even if you never perform a single effect – though I am sure you will.

Penguin asked me to record a video but even though I spend most of my time around camera and computers, I felt that the most effective endorsement I could give “Letters from Juan” was in writing and I hope that if you’ve read this far, you have already decided to treat yourself.