ALTAMONT — For a job associated with showmanship, grand theatrics, and ambitious acts of deception, Jay Mattioli describes being a magician in very workmanlike and relatable terms. 

The worst part of his job is not the threat of being eaten by tigers, although, to be fair, he also doesn’t use tigers in his act. No, the worst part about being a magician, Mattioli said, is being away from his wife and two young children for 175 days every year, which includes the six days of this year’s Altamont Fair.

And the best part of his job wasn’t meeting cultural icon and Berlin Wall bringer-downer David Hasselhoff, when Mattioli appeared on the television show “America’s Got Talent.” No, Mattioli said that the best part of his job is when he’s labored over a new trick for months, worked for countless hours to perfect it, and, then, finally, when he performs it, he earns smiles and applause from the audience. “I appreciate the response and the smile of people, but without the hard work that went before it, [the trick] is not as meaningful,” he said. 

When asked his favorite trick, Mattioli doesn’t point to making himself disappear on national television. Rather, he said, he’ll “always have a special place” for a four-and-a-half-minute routine where he ignites a handkerchief and makes a dove appear from out of nowhere.

The routine holds a special place for Mattioli because he’s been performing it for 21 years, he said. He said that he’s put more work into this routine than anything else he’s ever done.

“Is that the best routine that the audience ever sees? I don’t know,” he said. “But, for me, I always have so much appreciation for it because it’s something I remember starting with when I was 16 years old.” 

Ta-da! A magician gets his start 

Magic has been a part of Mattioli’s life since he was very young. He and his brother would celebrate their birthdays together, he said, and one year a magician performed at their birthday party.

Then, Mattioli said, there was magician David Copperfield’s annual television special. “It became an annual event in our household,” he said. Mattioli would record the special and “watch it 20, 30 times or more throughout the year … And wait for the next special.”

Mattioli said that the Copperfield special aired every spring throughout the 198os and during the first half of the 1990s. “To this day, I still think he is the best magician,” he said. Copperfield was the first magic “idol” he had.

And, when he was 12 or 13 years old, Mattioli said, his mother had business cards printed for him. “I was officially in business — that’s what makes you in business, by the way, to have a business card,” he said with a laugh.

Mattioli would hand out his card at local businesses and at local schools, he said, and, throughout high school and college, he would book his own work. 

He estimated that he’s performed at “well over a thousand” birthday parties. When his friends were flipping burgers, Mattioli was performing magic, which, he said, paid much better. 

After college, he made the leap to full-time magician. Although, at 21 years old, it’s not a big deal to not make much money, he said. 

He then began to perform a “strolling magic” act at restaurants, where he would hand out his business cards — a thousand business cards a year, he said, which turned into 20 or 30 birthday parties, which turned into more birthday-party bookings, which turned into booking company Christmas parties. 

Mattioli attributes part of his early-career success to never turning down work. “When you get an opportunity to perform and it was a paying gig, ‘Can you do it?’ The answer always was ‘yes’ … Then you figure out how to do it before the gig.” 

As a young magician, Mattioli experienced quite a bit of success. 

At age 18, he was named a “Champion of Magic” by the International Brotherhood of Magicians, which, with 10,000 members in 88 countries, claims to be the world’s largest organization of magicians. In 2006, he won the International Stage Contest of Magic of the Society of American Magicians, which bills itself as “the oldest and most prestigious magical society in the world.”

For non-magic enthusiasts, Mattioli likened the two competitions to a sort of Olympics of magic, where mostly amateur magicians perform five- to 10-minute routines for professional magicians who judge the competition. 

‘It’s a Catch-22, the information age’

Mattioli said that, in the year following his appearance on “America’s Got Talent,” there was a “significant bump” in the type of bookings he was receiving. For a short time, he said, he got a lot of attention for making a “small splash” on such a “massive” TV show. 

 Thanks in part to programs like “America’s Got Talent” and the explosion of the internet in the decade since he’s appeared on the show, Mattioli said that magic has remained fairly popular with the general public. But with that popularity, he said, comes the exposure of magic’s secrets. 

“It’s a Catch-22, the information age,” he said. 

Mattioli has a lot of annual repeat business like county fairs and corporate events, so he’s constantly trying to come up with new content, “which is difficult” — but also inevitable in the current information age, where people trade information so quickly, including magic secrets — because one of the priorities of a good magic act, he said, is that people have to be fooled. 

“I can showcase what I do to potential people who might want to hire me, but at the same time, the more you’re showcasing yourself … It [becomes] a little risky.”

But Mattioli also said that magicians don’t necessarily have to keep reinventing themselves, “which is difficult.” There are ways to make old tricks “seem” new by using different music or set design.

Mattioli said that a lot of his bookings aren’t because his show has the “most bamboozling tricks.” His repeat customers like the other aspects of the performance: the music, energy, audience interaction, and comedy.

However, when the general public first “glances at magic,” it has to fool the people. 

The work ain’t what it used to be

At one time, before he had a family, Mattioli said that working as a magician in Las Vegas might have been a goal. But his sense of what success means has changed over the years because of his children.

He still wants to be a magician, but at the same time, he wants to spend as much time at home as possible, he said. And the economics of being a Las Vegas magician just don’t work anymore.

The general public may not be aware of it, Mattioli said, but in more than 90 percent of Las Vegas shows, the performers aren’t collecting a salary from a resort or a hotel. What is typically happening, he said, is that someone is renting out the venue and putting on the show. 

So, according to Mattioli, that person has to hope he can sell enough tickets to cover all of the show’s overhead, then pay the rent on the venue, and then have some kind of profit to live on.

“Nobody goes there and is hired … That doesn’t happen anymore,” he said; it’s rare and typically happens with huge stars who are collecting a set fee from the venue for each show in which they perform. All other performers are simply renters. “It’s an unhealthy atmosphere to raise a family in,” Mattioli said. 

Now, when he hears other people in his business say, “Did you hear, they opened their own show in Las Vegas,” while a typical reaction is to be congratulatory, Mattioli’s reaction is, “Oh my god, good luck.” 

He’s not trying to be negative, he said; he just knows the economics of the situation. On any given night in Las Vegas, there are over 200 shows taking place within a three-mile radius, he said. 

For Mattioli, being on the road 175 days a year is hard work, but, he said, it’s also better for him to collect “a lot of little peanuts,” while supplementing his income with his side job of making props for other magicians. 

Being on the road 175 days a year also takes a lot of passion, Mattioli said. 

When he’s hired for an event, the actual act of performing magic is only about 10 percent of the work. The other 90 percent, he said, is working on new material and making sure it’s polished, packing at home, driving to the event, setting up, quickly followed by tearing everything down, packing it back up, and “moving on to the next gig.”

“You have to be willing to do 90 percent of uncomfortable to get the 10 percent you really enjoy,” he said. ​