Inauguration gig boosts Jackie Evancho’s concert ticket sales

For Jackie Evancho, the 16-year-old singer who endured a wave of criticism after agreeing to sing the national anthem at Donald Trump’s inauguration, there is a bright side: a bump in concert ticket sales.

Prior to news of Evancho’s presidential performance, the singer’s Feb. 12 concert at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts — part of the venue’s season announcement in June — had sold about 900 tickets. After the Dec. 14 announcement of her inauguration performance on NBC’s “Today” show, the pace of ticket sales increased noticeably, a Cerritos Center spokesperson said. More than 1,200 tickets have been sold, leaving fewer than 200 seats in back rows.

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So far, the center said, it has received neither requests for refunds nor complaints about Evancho’s pending performance.

Evancho, who rose to fame in 2010 on “America’s Got Talent,” has treated her inaugural performance as an apolitical act. On the same day she broke her inauguration news, her transgender older sister, Juliet, published an essay in Teen Vogue titled, “How Juliet Evancho Came Out to Her Family, and the Entire World.” Since then, the sisters have done joint media interviews without saying much about the divide between the transgender community and the incoming Trump administration.

Evancho is expected to close out the ceremony Friday at the Capitol with “The Star-Spangled Banner.” After that, she is scheduled to appear in concert in Cerritos, Palm Desert and Campbell next month, followed by dates in Florida, Pittsburgh and Seattle.

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