Marco Tempest

Marco Tempest leads our headlong charge into an exciting future. Exploring the boundaries between digital "virtual" worlds and "reality," he moves seamlessly between the "real" world on stage and the world behind his multiple display screens…where anything is possible.  His unique talents and imagination have made him the hottest corporate magician in the world today, and garnered enthusiastic praise for both live and televised appearances around the globe.

A native of Zurich, Switzerland, Tempest won numerous awards as a youngster for his ingenious use of illusion with contemporary choreography. While still in his teens, he became one of Europe's top professionals as part of the duo United Artists. Collaborating with Martin Cottet, Tempest presented the acclaimed four-hands "flash act" in showrooms and on television throughout Europe and Asia.

Going solo in 1989, Tempest began developing his own style with visual and conceptual dance magic. His show "Key of the Imagination" incorporated a distinctive Eastern style including fans, origami, Kabuki streamers and boomerangs. Tempest was soon touring worldwide, picking up such prestigious honors as New York's World Cup of Magic  Award.

Tempest's interest in digital technologies generated his unusual performance style, in which an exploration of illusion arts merged with interactive high tech animation.  The result was his "NeXT Wave of Magic," which premiered to rave reviews in Zurich in December 1991. Tempest's spectacular use of a 32-screen video wall and the latest in techno-music earned him star spots in television variety shows, commercials, performing arts centers and corporate events in the U.S., as well as Japan, France, Monte Carlo, Germany, Spain, and the U.K.  His ability to transform logos and products into 3-D animatronics has put him much in demand on the corporate market.

Tempest has been featured in major casino shows in the U.S and around the world, including Dreamstore at Monte Carlo Sporting Club, Magiquest at Harrah's Casino in Atlantic City in 1990, and The Good Time Variety Show at The Showboat Casino Hotel, Atlantic City in 1992. He has made numerous appearances on behalf of Panasonic, Apple, Lucent Technologies, Johnson & Johnson, I.B.M., Mitsubishi, Silicon Graphics and many others at corporate events and trade shows over the past 8 years in the U.S., Europe and throughout the world.

Tempest's full-evening show, MAG!C - The Magic of Marco Tempest, which completed a 12 week touring engagement, traveling to major theatres throughout Switzerland, Belgium and Holland in the fall of 1995. The show combined traditional illusion techniques with the latest virtual reality and computer animation techniques, bringing technical special effects to live performance which had, til then, been available only to film and video audiences.

Since 1996, Tempest has been living and working from new state-of-the-art studios in New York City.  He continues to perform extensively in the corporate market, on television and before an awe-struck general public wherever he goes. In 1998 he was awarded France's top honor for magicians, the Mandrake D'Or. 

During the past year, Tempest has developed and marketed his first 6 part television series "The Virtual Magician – Keeper of Secrets" .

Live public appearances included being featured for the second straight year on the annual Digiglobe Awards show (Europe's Academy Awards for the Digital Media), the world premiere of his brand-new "Video Heads" – a troupe of song and dance zanies with human bodies and video screen heads – on German and Swiss television, the creation  and performance a most amazing magic light show for Microsoft's annual Global Briefing in New Orleans, and the presentation of his own 40 minute "Tempest Digital Magic Show" for the opening of Dubai's "Techno-Surprise Festival."

Tempest continues to lead the charge into the future of magic and performance, sprinting to stay just ahead of the current wave of technology and performance technique, diving headlong into that brave new world of wonders that awaits us all.