Dear Readers,
A May mix of Italian connections:
Aldo Colombini (1951-2014) left us recently and the world of magic lost one of its greatest contributors. Aldo was my husband’s favorite magician and when we celebrated fifty years of matrimonial magic at the Verdi Club in San Francisco (site of our original wedding reception), Aldo and his wife Rachel entertained all our guests with their marvelous magical commedia act.
At Aldo Colombini’s Celebration of Life gathering, the Broken Wand Ceremony was performed by magician Rick Del Vecchio who also read tributes regarding Aldo’s life from friends and magicians all over the world.
Aldo Colombini was born in Maranello, a suburb of Modena, Italy, on “La Festa di San Giuseppe” 1951.
When Aldo was fourteen, he went to work for the Ferrari racing car factory and for seven long years did repetitive assembly work. It drove him crazy, so he looked for a way out. One day, he was given a book on magic. He instantly became hooked and Aldo’s new career was born.
Early on, he took the stage name Fabian, but after his move to America in 1993, Aldo used his real name. Despite not knowing any English when he first arrived in the U.S., he quickly became known for his clever techniques and powerful magic. Over the next twenty years, he was booked regularly for magic conventions and in Los Angeles, all the showrooms at the Magic Castle. One little known fact about Aldo is that he was a consummate children’s magician and even had a long-running television spot on a children’s TV show in Italy.
Aldo was a prolific writer and teacher of magic. He marketed hundreds of magic tricks, along with numerous books and instructional videos on the topic. He read, spoke and wrote in Italian, English, Spanish and French; played guitar; illustrated some of his own magic books; and performed in over 61 countries and almost every state.
Magic Castle’s Parlour Magician of the Year, he wrote a long-running column for The Linking Ring magazine, titled “As Always, Aldo”. He also contributed to the British Magigram magazine for over twenty years, and provided many tricks to Harry Lorayne’s Apocalypse. He will probably be best remembered for being a simplifier of magic. He could take a trick with fifteen moves and do it ten minutes later with just five moves.
Aldo was a big Italian teddy bear and a caring man who spread joy, laughter and magic wherever he went. Unfortunately, on February 9, 2014, Aldo suffered a catastrophic stroke and passed away quietly three days later.
Readers with an interest in “parlor magic” can visit the www.wildcolombini.com website updated by his wife Rachel and browse the May products featured at only $10 each.
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