The Juilliard School

Alumni News
Spotlight

The Musician Magician

She can make flowers bloom out of nowhere and solid rings magically link and unlink before your eyes—but Margaret Steele's greatest trick may be reinventing herself. For 15 years, Steele (B.M. '76, M.M. '77, oboe) has pursued a career as a professional magician who now performs more than 100 shows a year, enchanting audiences young and old at libraries, schools, birthday parties, and conventions.

Steele discovered magic through what she calls a "meant-to-be accident" at the lowest point in her life. In the midst of a divorce and dependent on house-sitting for a place to live, she also lost the orchestra job around which she had pieced together a "patchwork quilt" of freelancing and temping. Seeking distraction from her troubles one night, she walked into a club in upstate New York and was galvanized by a magician's performance. Her childhood fascination with magic was rekindled, and she scurried to take lessons.

Margaret Steele (Photo by Peter Sharp; Sharp Images)

She had a built-in venue right away, performing children's concerts with a woodwind quintet. Her colleagues were "fine musicians, but they didn't relate to children very well," she recalls. "They would get up and talk about their instruments, and then sit down to play amidst total chaos—it was a squirmfest!" But when Steele would make her oboe squawk as if it wouldn't play, then pull an egg or paper streamers out of the bell, the kids were riveted.

With the lofty goal of combining music education with magic, she designed programs for the Hudson Valley Philharmonic, New Jersey Symphony, and Queens Symphony. The pay was low, the scheduling complicated, and the space constrained ("with cello bows in my butt," she laughs), yet Steele soldiered on—until she had lunch one day with Peter Schickele, who looked over the script for an elaborate new show she planned and didn't think it worked. "I said the kids really needed to know about the music, and he said he didn't think so, as long as they heard it. That was a turning point for me; I realized I could use all this wonderful music in a solo magic show."

Plunging deeper into the "wild and wacky world of magic," Steele found all kinds of characters—but few women, except as scantily costumed assistants. "I thought, wow, this is a great opportunity … and then I discovered that magic conventions and clubs were as much about male bonding as they were about magic," she says. While fortune tellers are usually women, she says, "in our society it's perceived as a masculine thing to stand up and display one's magic powers."

As Steele's magic has evolved, it's become even more character-based. "It's so much about performing," she explains. "Audiences need to remember you—not your tricks." Her newest project revolves around the portrayal of the legendary vaudeville-era magician Adelaide Herrmann, known as the Queen of Magic. Adelaide was the wife and assistant of Alexander Herrmann, the 19th century's greatest magician. Less than a month after his sudden death of a heart attack in 1896, Adelaide made her own debut at 43 as a magic star and continued her husband's company, performing as a major headliner until well into her 70s. "She's a great role model for all performers," Steele says.

Steele has never stopped playing the oboe, and still subs regularly in Broadway shows. "It's a really good fit for me. I love the theater, and I've had such a seat-of-the-pants life for so long that I can walk into the pit with no rehearsal, under a conductor I've never seen before, and just do it. I'm using all my skills—a lot of times the music is not easy. And I always run into old Juilliard pals."

Autonomy is the greatest advantage of her life, but there are disadvantages as well. Years of loading up her car with all her gear, traveling to and setting up shows, then dismantling and reloading everything have begun to take their toll—as she discovered two years ago when she injured her back while doing 12 shows in four places in four days. What really helped her was acupuncture—which she is now studying in a three-year program at the Swedish Institute, with the goal of establishing a new career as a licensed acupuncturist when the physical demands of performing become too great. She also hopes to record and market an album of original songs from her kids' shows. Steele has—if you'll pardon the pun—plenty up her sleeve.

—Jane Rubinsky

Alumni Relations

Discover Your Benefits