I met John Guastaferro about 13 years ago through my wife at the Anaheim YMCA. At the time, he was the marketing director and I was a walk-on tech instructor for a teen tech program. In just a few short interactions that summer, I immediately knew that he was the real deal. Over the past decade, we’ve loosely kept tabs on each other, mostly through LinkedIn and just this past week, the stars aligned and I was able to catch his show at the Muckenthaler in Fullerton, CA. What kind of show might you ask? Well, John just happens to be a world class magician who’s an author of two magic books…and he also rips at Spanish style guitar. So his show was equal parts music and magic; Definitely a one-of-a-kind event that only he could pull off.

The room was packed and they just bringing in chairs. I was grateful for the two sound techs for keeping a generous space for me to shoot from near the front. For nearly two hours, John had them wrapped up in his jokes, tricks and songs, not an easy task. Although I was everywhere at once in that room, it hardly felt like work because I was just as entranced by his magic tricks as the rest of the audience. If you have a chance to catch him perform, I highly recommend it.