Skip to main content
A Portland concert by the rising pop singer Sabrina Carpenter at the Keller Auditorium was canceled Monday night due to a bomb threat to another venue: the Crystal Ballroom, where Carpenter was previously scheduled to perform.
Rolling Stone first reported the news Tuesday night, which had not been announced to Carpenter’s Monday night audience. Portland police confirmed the threat to WW on Wednesday with additional details.
Lt. Nathan Sheppard, a Portland police spokesman, tells WW that an employee of the Crystal Ballroom called 911 at 5:38 pm Monday “after receiving an anonymous phone call from an individual claiming they were going to blow up the venue.” That was several hours before Carpenter would have taken the stage.
“Coincidentally,” Sheppard added, “Sabrina Carpenter’s performance had already been moved to a larger venue (Keller Auditorium) due to the number of people interested in hearing her performance.”
Carpenter’s Keller show would have been her third Portland show out of four headlining concerts on her current tour. She last sang at the Crystal Ballroom in 2017, and the Hawthorne Theatre in 2016. Her Seattle concert at the Paramount Theater went ahead as scheduled Tuesday night, with heightened security and a revised clear bag policy.
“We contacted both venues and also conducted extra patrols around the ballroom due to the threat,” Sheppard said. “I have no knowledge of the event at Keller being canceled, so you’ll need to contact them for further details. I have no investigative updates to share.”
AEG Promotions, which books shows at the Keller, confirmed that the threat led to the cancellation. “While the threat was not directed at Keller Auditorium specifically,” says AEG spokesman Dennis Dennehy, “Sabrina and event organizers agreed that out of an abundance of caution the show be called off, and steps were taken to ensure that the audience exited the venue calmly, quickly and safely. Sabrina looks forward to returning to Portland and performing for her fans soon, and her tour will continue as scheduled.”
Carpenter is an uncontroversial pop culture figure, and the Crystal Ballroom is one of Portland’s favorite concert halls, which makes the threat seem especially unexpected. A singer on her fifth album and first perfume deal with a growing gay following, Carpenter is also an actress known for supporting work in the 2014 Disney Channel series Girl Meets World—the soft reboot of the classic series Boy Meets World, which aired three seasons—and the 2019 Netflix movie Tall Girl and its 2022 sequel. She debuted on Broadway as Lindsay Lohan’s character in the doomed 2020 run of Mean Girls, canceled after two performances due to the pandemic’s onset.
Carpenter’s audience at the Keller was notified of the show’s cancellation an hour after she was scheduled to take the stage. Carpenter had already performed a soundcheck for VIP ticketholders before the show was called off. The opening act, Spill Tab, had also already performed, per the gay blog JustJared.
The cancellation was announced without mention of the bomb threat, which likely helped facilitate a calm, orderly evacuation from Keller Auditorium.
Carpenter’s social media announcement about the show’s cancellation offered Portland guests a refund and promised a rescheduled concert, but did not mention the bomb threat.