Kel Modern Magic

Most of what you are hiring is the part you will never see: the emails answered the same day, the requirements sent to the venue before anyone asks, and a performer who is set up and ready while the room is still filling.

Here is how it actually goes.

AFTER YOU BOOK

1. Kel confirms the date and sends an invoice. A performance agreement is available if your company needs one on file.
2. A short call or email exchange about the event: the room, the schedule, the guest count, and what the company is actually celebrating.
3. Kel sends a technical rider to you and to the venue, covering sound and AV, the performance area, the introduction, and the exact time the show starts.
4. On the day, Kel arrives early, sets up the room himself, checks sound, and performs.

WHAT KEL SENDS THE VENUE

Once the date is confirmed, the venue and the AV team get the rider: a short setup guide covering sound, the performance area, lighting, and the running order, including the introduction and the exact time the show begins. It is there to get the conditions right, not to make demands — most events need nothing from it beyond the microphone line. Sending it ahead means nobody is solving problems in the twenty minutes before doors.

WHAT KEL NEEDS

For close-up and strolling magic: nothing. No stage, no microphone, no power, no setup time, no changes to the floor plan, and no line on the run-of-show. Kel works around the event as it is actually happening.

For a stage or gala show: a 12 by 12 foot performance area, house lights up enough to see faces in the audience, and a few minutes to check sound before doors. Kel brings his own wireless microphone.

For most bookings there is no green room, no tech crew, no special lighting, and no dressing room. Kel carries everything he performs with and sets up himself. Larger stage shows occasionally ask for more, and anything extra is in the rider well ahead of the date.

HOW THE SHOW GETS BUILT AROUND YOUR EVENT

Kel does not run one fixed set. For a brand launch that has meant working the product into the magic itself. For a sales kickoff it has meant building the finale around the number the team just hit. Send the theme, a few names, and the one thing leadership wants people to remember, and Kel handles the rest.

The most common booking is close-up magic during the cocktail hour or the early-arrival window, when guests are standing around waiting for something to happen. Kel works the room group by group. It is the fastest way to turn a quiet room full of strangers into a room that is talking, and it is the reason planners keep putting a magician in that slot.

WILL ANYONE GET EMBARRASSED?

No, and it is the single most common worry planners raise. The guests who help with the magic are the stars of it, not the punchline. They hold the cards, they sign them, and the impossible happens in their own hands — so they get the credit, and they are usually the people everyone is still talking about at the end of the night. Nobody is made to look foolish. Helping is always an invitation and never a trap, and in practice the hard part is choosing between the hands that go up.

IS THE SHOW CLEAN?

Yes. Squeaky clean and written for corporate rooms: no off-colour material, and nothing anyone has to apologise for on Monday morning. Kel performs for all-staff events, client receptions, and family days where that genuinely matters, and the material does not change depending on who is in the room.

IF THE SCHEDULE SLIPS

Events run late. Kel plans for it. Close-up magic can start early, stretch, or compress without anyone noticing, and a stage set can be shortened on the spot without losing the ending. Nobody needs to protect the schedule on the magician's behalf.

HOW TO INTRODUCE KEL FROM THE STAGE

The exact wording goes out with the rider. For most events this is all it takes:
"Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome award-winning Vancouver magician, Kel."
Keep it short. The less an audience is told to expect, the better the first two minutes land.

Kel Modern Magic is the professional magic of Kelvin Ng, a corporate magician and mentalist in Vancouver, British Columbia. Twenty-five years, a little past 700 paid shows, and about 140 events a year — which is a long way of saying he has probably worked a room like yours before.

Kel performs at corporate events, conferences, galas, VIP receptions, fundraisers, festivals, Chinese New Year celebrations, and company Christmas parties throughout Metro Vancouver. Booking starts at $2,000 plus GST.

AWARDS

At the 2026 Pacific Coast Association of Magicians championships in New Westminster, Kel won three gold medals: Comedy Magician of the Year, Most Novel Magic, and the Tony Eng Memorial People's Choice Award. The last one is voted by the audience instead of the judges, which is why it is the one he mentions first.

Earlier honours include Close-Up Magician of the Year from the Fraser Valley Magic Circle, the Leon Mandrake Award for Showmanship, and the Murray Award, voted by executives of the Fraser Valley Magic Circle, the Vancouver Magic Circle, and the Society of American Magicians.

CLIENTS

Kel Modern Magic has been hired by Nintendo, Deloitte, KPMG, SAP, Audi, Hermès, McDonald's, A&W, McCarthy Tétrault, T&T Supermarket, Aviso Wealth, the City of Richmond, and the Metropolitan Lions Club, among roughly eighty Vancouver businesses that book regularly.

FIVE YEARS AT THE SAME LAW FIRM

McCarthy Tétrault have booked Kel five years running.

Lawyers are a hard room. They are professionally sceptical, they have seen the whole corporate-entertainment playbook, and they are not remotely interested in looking slow in front of partners. Which is exactly why the magic happens in their hands instead of Kel's. They hold the cards. They sign them. The impossible happens an inch from their own fingers, and they are the ones who cannot explain it.

Hiring a magician once is easy. Getting asked back five years in a row is the only review that counts.

WHAT KEL IS HIRED FOR

Close-up and strolling magic. Sleight of hand performed table to table or group to group during a cocktail hour, reception, dinner, or trade show booth. No stage, no sound, no setup — just Kel moving through the room while the magic happens in the guests' own hands, inches from their eyes. Usually 60 to 180 minutes, and the most-booked thing he does.

Stage and gala show. A 30 to 60 minute magic and comedy show for a seated audience, written for conference general sessions, awards nights, galas, and Christmas parties. Works for rooms from 50 to 500.

Trade shows and brand activations. Magic built around the client's own product, used to stop traffic at a booth and hold a crowd long enough for the sales team to do their job.

Festivals, fireworks nights, and outdoor events. Public festivals and community events where the audience is moving and the conditions are nothing like a theatre. Close-up magic needs no stage, no power, and no sound system, which makes it one of the few acts that genuinely works outdoors.

MENTALISM

Half of what Kel does is not sleight of hand at all.

A mentalist works with thoughts rather than objects: a word someone is only thinking of, a number settled on before anyone walked into the room, a decision an executive was certain was entirely their own. There is no deck to blame and nothing up a sleeve, because there is no prop in play. That is why mentalism tends to land harder on a corporate audience than card magic does. Card magic is impressive. Mentalism is unsettling, in the way people enjoy being unsettled.

It works close-up, table to table, and it works from a stage. It is the usual request for leadership meetings, awards nights, and conference sessions where the brief is "something they have not seen before" — and for sales teams, because a routine about reading people has a way of starting conversations that outlast the show.

THE SILENT ACT, AND CHINESE EVENTS

Vancouver rooms are rarely all one language, and an act built on wordplay loses a good part of an audience like that. So Kel built one with no words in it at all: fully visual, modern, and funny without a single line of dialogue.

Kel performs in English. The silent act is how language stops being a question — nothing in it needs translating, so it plays the same for a room of visiting delegates as for a room of head-office staff.

He is also Chinese-Canadian, and a good share of his work is Chinese community and Lunar New Year events for companies, shopping centres, and organisations across Metro Vancouver, including T&T Supermarket and the City of Richmond. Knowing how a room works is not the same thing as speaking its language, and for those events it tends to be the part that matters.

WHERE KEL PERFORMS

Based in Vancouver and working throughout Metro Vancouver: Richmond, Burnaby, Surrey, Coquitlam, North Vancouver, West Vancouver, New Westminster, Langley, Delta, and White Rock. Whistler, Victoria, and Kelowna are regular bookings, and Kel travels across Canada for conferences and corporate events.

VENUES

Past performances include the Massey Theatre in New Westminster, the River Rock Casino Resort, the Vancouver Convention Centre, hotel ballrooms, corporate offices, golf clubs, and private residences across the Lower Mainland.

HOW MUCH DOES A CORPORATE MAGICIAN COST IN VANCOUVER?

Kel Modern Magic starts at $2,000 plus GST for close-up magic at a reception. A full stage or gala show runs $2,000 to $5,000 plus GST. Price depends on audience size, run time, travel, and whether additional performers are needed.

HOW FAR IN ADVANCE SHOULD WE BOOK?

60 to 90 days for most dates. December goes furthest out — Christmas party season is usually full by September — and Lunar New Year dates are gone by November.

HOW MANY GUESTS CAN ONE MAGICIAN COVER?

Roughly 50 to 60 guests an hour for close-up and strolling magic. Above that, Kel brings in additional performers and manages them himself, so you still have one contact and one invoice.

CAN THE MAGIC INCLUDE OUR PRODUCT OR BRAND?

Yes, and it is one of the most common corporate requests. Kel has built product and brand moments into the magic itself for trade shows and launches, so what the audience remembers is attached to what the company is actually selling.

DO YOU TRAVEL OUTSIDE METRO VANCOUVER?

Yes. Whistler, Victoria, and Kelowna are regular, and Kel travels across Canada for conferences and corporate events. Travel is quoted with the booking.

ARE YOU INSURED?

Yes. Kel Modern Magic carries $2,000,000 in liability coverage, and a certificate is available for any venue that needs one on file.

Required:
- Wireless Microphones
- backstage dressing room (for setup)
- sound system to play from USB or from iPhone

Suggestions:
- Dark curtained backdrop
- elevated stage
- MC to introduce acts
- Prize raffle draws to fill space in between acts