[caption id="attachment_13093" align="alignleft" width="300"] Image: Joan Marcus[/caption]
Andrew remembers as if it were yesterday: "When I saw the white circus tent, I knew that was where I wanted to go. When my mother had that amazed look in her eyes, I knew: I want to enchant people too." Basso is seven years old. He starts juggling, entertaining his classmates with little tricks in the playground. Magic trick after magic trick - his first birthday show was born. When his father gave him a magic box from Mago Silvan, an Italian show star, Andrew couldn't stop himself. "This box was my revelation," recalls the 33-year-old. He still guards this box like a treasure today.
Bye-bye Italia, hello USA: learning from the elite
Basso's desire for magic became more and more powerful during his school years and could no longer be stopped. He reads all the magic books in the local library and, at the age of twelve, is introduced to the secrets of magic by Sergio Molinari, a local magician, because: "You can find little sleight-of-hand tricks everywhere. But the real tricks have been passed down from magician to magician over the centuries, you won't find them on the internet. That's why my time with Sergio was very important to me," says Andrew Basso. After five years of training, he now charges 10,000 lire (now 5 euros) per show. Molinari recommends that his protégé attend magic conventions to become one of the greats. Basso scrapes together his hard-earned savings and, not yet twenty, flies alone to Las Vegas to the World Magic Seminar. There he won a week-long workshop with Lance Burton. Burton has had his own Vegas show for 30 years and is one of the celebrities in US show business. Basso learns from the best, from Copperfield to Burton.
