Arts & Entertainment

James Durbin Concert is ON for Saturday in Santa Cruz

Mayor Ryan Coonerty says the city begged and pleaded with FOX to make an exception to its rule of only allowing the Top 3 performers to give concerts.

James Durbin, the 22-year-old singer with autism who was voted off American Idol Thursday, will give the Saturday concert that was scheduled in anticipation of his making the Top 3 in the contest.

Mayor Ryan Coonerty announced the concert Friday, saying that it took "begging and pleading" to get FOX TV to overrule its policy and let the fourth-place contender put on a show.

The decision came Friday morning during a two-hour-long phone call between a Santa Cruz committee and American Idol producers that began at 9 a.m., Coonerty said.

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He had made the request Thursday night but was told that it was unlikely. Then he and members of the Seaside Company, which owns the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, and with the Convention and Visitors Council, police department and Chamber of Commerce, got the good news at the start of the phone call. They spent the rest of the time working out details.

"I'm relieved, obviously," Coonerty said. "Like everyone else, I was disappointed last night. It was especially difficult not to have the celebration in the community. James obviously has a long career ahead of him, and hopefully this helps remind him of how much support he has in Santa Cruz."

Find out what's happening in Santa Cruzwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The concert will start at 5 p.m., as originally planned, and will feature the group that launched him to local prominence, the White Album Ensemble. He will do three songs with them. He will also go to the Louden Nelson Center before that to meet with youth theater groups and the press. And he will have a walking procession to the Boardwalk that will include a marching band.

Durbin was originally going to fly in Friday and start the day earlier, if he had won, but instead he will arrive Saturday morning and leave Saturday night. Coonerty said the producers told the group they had never seen as much national and press response for any other contestant.

He said the Seaside Company expects as many as 15,000 people to attend the concert. The largest show before that was 10,000 people.

"I hope with the on-again, off-again nature of this that people will make it down to see him," he said.


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