Young magician and sleight of hand specialist Sebastian Walton continues to impress his peers and, perhaps more importantly, his audiences. When we last caught up with young Sebastian he had just won the Magic Circle Stage Magician of the Year. He was the youngest, at just 20 years of age (we don’t know what 20 years is in metric so we’re using American data). That was way back in 2016. We met him and took in his Parlor show at the Magic Castle three times coming off that big win.
He recently returned to the Magic Castle and slayed lay and magic audience members alike.
As Yogi Berra said about pitcher Don Sutton’s perfect game, “this kid is good.” Almost any praise for Mr. Walton will seem an understatement. He takes real risks in his performance with effects that could go horribly wrong. We don’t know why he does it but it is a pleasure to watch someone with real skills in the sleight of hand department work in front of a real crowd.
We’ll continue to do our Sucker Sliding Die Box and Hippity Hop Bunnies even though the effects do not have the same impact on audiences, we feel safe with store-bought, EZ Magic. We are saving our lunch money for a Milk Pitcher – soon to be introduced into our act. But that’s just us and that’s the reason we haven’t won any awards from The Magic Circle or even our family members, for that matter.
His act is not just daring, entertaining, and different from anything we had seen, it was truly mystifying. Mr. Walton is certainly deserving of the praise heaped upon him by our British cousins.
If you don’t believe us, you can read our review of Mr. Walton’s show on Inside Magic here. We wouldn’t lie, twice.
We just learned that a couple of weeks ago he won Yorkshire’s Own Talent.
The latest news from Mr. Walton is that he has a new website up and running. We also have it on very good authority that he will be returning to the Magic Castle in 2019. We will be there, front and center, to watch and review for this well established and esteemed magic news website.
What better way to celebrate Cinco de Mayo than to check out the winner in the latest round of Britain’s Got Talent, Sebastian Walton?
(By the way, it is pronounced “MAY-oh.” We were corrected on the bus this morning and what the day commemorates has nothing to do with salad dressing, which explains the pronunciation).
To say we are a super fan of Sebastian Walton would be an understatement but certainly a valid defense to criminal charges of stalking in most jurisdictions. (Not that we stalk him but if we did, we would know he has a Facebook page with his upcoming shows listed here: facebook.com/sebastian.j.walton). He wowed us at The Magic Castle last year with a routine that was deserving of our vote for Parlor Magician of the Year.
Mr. Walton is a young man with big boy magic skills. His Any Card Named effect was killer and had those in the know talking around the bar late into the evening. None of us were sure how he did it. As the evening wore on, none of us were sure if he did it and finally, at the end of the evening, two members of our group were not sure where they lived or how to form coherent sentences. Astounding.
In last night’s qualifying round, Mr. Walton received positive votes from the four judges and moves on to the next level of competition.
We received a link to the authoritative British television website, Telly Mix and read of his awesome performance before some very tough judges.
[Telly means “television” in British. They have different ways of doing things and saying things there. We point that out for our US readers who may have confused the website’s name with the under-appreciated cowboy actress, Telly Mix who performed just feet away from where we now write this enthralling article. Telly’s uncle (by marriage) was Tom Mix, the cowboy star and on whose ranch they later built Fox Studios and later Century City. She was a delightful gal who made the transition from vaudeville to movies easier than most – thanks to her winning smile and uncle’s connections. Her career ended tragically when she was arrested in an after-hours cowboy club in Santa Monica with a frozen bullwhip and $623.00 in cash allegedly taken in a fake piñata scheme. According to police records, she would sell defective piñatas that could not be broken open to unsuspecting consumers. Although charges were later dropped – thanks to her connections – she never made a return to the movies and ended her days working at a Hot Dog on a Stick stand in Bakersfield, California; never rising above the position of assistant manager.]
Simon Cowell even praised the young performer. He does not praise anyone, ever.
Mr. Walton performed a great effect with Amanda Holden’s ring. We do not know Amanda Holden but she seems like a much more likable person than Mr. Cowell and, we think, prettier. Apparently, the scene was cut from the show wherein Mr. Walton borrowed Ms. Holden’s platinum wedding ring (so that means she is married), made it vanish in a flash of flame and found it later in a walnut somehow hidden inside an orange.
We have seen Mr. Walton perform this effect before – twice. We can vouch that it is a different ring each time. For a while, we thought he had just done the old genetically mutated walnut in an orange trick with a fake ring planted with the hybrid fruit. But no. The fact that it is a different ring each time means that he could not have raised the walnut/orange from seed with a ring inside. To quote one of the victims in Telly Mix’ case, “we cannot crack it.”
Ms. Holden confided in Mr. Walton, “How you did it, I actually want to believe in magic.”
At this point, we would have immediately started a cult and enlisted Ms. Holden to be a high priestess or something but Mr. Walton has far more class and plus he was surrounded by cameras and an audience – or as we like to call the scene, a witness-rich environment.
Mr. Cowell told the young miracle worker, “You’re very talented and I don’t know how you did which is the whole point of magic.”
Mr. Walton has a bright future ahead of him. We saw that he has a new website at sebastianwalton.com and were very impressed by its content and substance. He is a star – you read it here first.
Not “Young for the Castle” kind of young but younger. Young as in “you cannot buy liquor or rent a car or legally join on-line dating services” kind of young.
He claims to be 18 and that is possible but what is unlikely is that he is that good with so little in the way of real life performing experience. He has won several of the Magic Circle’s young magician awards, performed on UK television and has been seen by royalty. That is a lot to accomplish in a decade. That is a lot to accomplish in a lifetime. The closest we have come to being viewed by royalty involved a webcam with someone who said they were a royal or something like that.
How can someone just 18 years-of-age know how to handle a sophisticated magic audience in a foreign country with such skill?
Presumably he has never been booed off the stage by seven year-olds whilst (that’s UK talk for “while”) performing a show for free in a public library during a heat wave in coastal Florida all the while wondering if his borrowed dove is going to survive waiting its production in the big finale. He has never tried to squeeze in one last performance of a home-made Zig-Zag before his once svelte female assistant goes into labor. We doubt he has ever herniated himself trying to blow-up balloon animals for a mall’s worth of demanding kids.
There is only one explanation for this phenomenon. He must be talented beyond his years.
He began his routine with an extraordinary routine wherein any audience member called the name of a card and he caused it to rise from, shoot out of, escape or otherwise mysteriously appear from a freely-handled deck of cards. It was something to see. We were in the back row of the Parlor and were blown away by his presence and audience management abilities.
We were in the back row because this young man has followers who cued (UK talk for “got in line”) to get the prime. Some of the fans were from his home country and were very polite and proper in their refusal to allow us to sit on their laps or lay across two of them.
But even from the cheap seats, we marveled at how he owned the room and he held them in his unblemished (by liver spots and excessive wrinkles seen on performers of our ancient demographic) palm with a charming confidence.
We were honored that he came downstairs to the Museum and caught part of act. We wanted to stop our ramblings and messy sleights to introduce him to the room ala Ed Sullivan (a reference Mr. Walton will need to do the Google to learn) but were so self-conscious that we thought it best to remain focused on the task at hand (wrinkled and bespotted though that hand was).
He performed incredible demonstration of card dexterity for a cheering throng, we tried to remember which side of the TV Magic Cards we were supposed to have face-up. At least that was what we felt at the time.
Mr. Walton will be appearing at The Castle this weekend and should not be missed. He is a genuine star – not a genuine “future” star or promising young performer — the real deal.
Check out his impressive credentials and promotional materials on his website here.
Young magician and sleight of hand specialist Sebastian Walton continues to impress his peers and, perhaps more importantly, his audiences. When we last caught up with young Sebastian he had just won the Magic Circle Stage Magician of the Year. He was the youngest, at just 20 years of age (we don’t know what 20 years is in metric so we’re using American data). That was way back in 2016. We met him and took in his Parlor show at the Magic Castle three times coming off that big win.
