When the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts voted in mid-December to add President Donald Trump’s name to the iconic concert hall, they did so to reflect “unequivocal bipartisan support for America’s cultural center for generations to come,” said Vice President for Public Relations Roma Daravi. But in the weeks since Trump’s name first graced the Kennedy Center building, the storied performance space has seen a wave of cancellations by longtime performers. Some directly linked their decision to the center’s MAGA rebrand — prompting a round of recriminations and threats from administration figures.
More than ‘symbolic gestures’
The decision by jazz band The Cookers to cancel its two “previously promoted” New Year’s Eve performances, coupled with the previous cancellation of the center’s annual Christmas Eve Jazz concert, is “intensifying the fallout” for the Kennedy Center “after it was renamed to include President Trump,” said The New York Times. Similarly, musician Chuck Redd’s decision to cancel the longstanding holiday “Jazz Jams” performance he’d hosted since 2006 came after seeing the “name change on the Kennedy Center website and then hours later on the building,” Redd said to The Associated Press.
And on Monday, the New York-based Doug Varone and the Dancers troupe announced it had canceled an upcoming April performance at the center “despite an invitation,” said WUSA. “With the latest act of Donald J. Trump renaming the Center after himself,” Varone said on Instagram, “we can no longer permit ourselves nor ask our audiences to step inside this once great institution.”
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This “fresh round of cancellations” follows “earlier artist backlash” this spring, when multiple high-profile artists distanced themselves from the center after Trump “named himself the institution’s chairman,” the Los Angeles Times said. Crucially, these latest cancellations are “not symbolic gestures,” said Mediaite. They involve “real money, professional risk and decisions artists did not make lightly.”
“This is how I keep the lights on,” said musician Kristy Lee on Instagram, announcing her Kennedy Center cancellation. “But losing my integrity would cost me more than any paycheck.”
Accusations of ‘classic intolerance’
The wave of cancellations has prompted a particularly harsh response from Kennedy Center President Richard Grenell, a longtime Trump ally and adviser who threatened a $1 million lawsuit against Redd in a letter obtained by ABC News. The decision to cancel the jazz shows was, Grenell said, “classic intolerance” and an example of “sad bullying tactics employed by certain elements on the left.”
“Your dismal ticket sales and lack of donor support, combined with your last-minute cancellation has cost us considerably,” said Grenell. “This is your official notice that we will seek $1 million in damages from you for this political stunt.”
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The Kennedy Center plans to pursue the suit “after the holidays,” said NPR. But Grenell’s position “requires believing that politics” only entered into the Kennedy Center’s equations “when artists objected to the renaming, not when the renaming happened,” said Mediaite. By “labelling dissenting artists extremists,” Grenell “shifts attention away” from the initial renaming that “set everything in motion” and “discourages others from making the same connection publicly.”
Rafi Schwartz has worked as a politics writer at The Week since 2022, where he covers elections, Congress and the White House. He was previously a contributing writer with Mic focusing largely on politics, a senior writer with Splinter News, a staff writer for Fusion's news lab, and the managing editor of Heeb Magazine, a Jewish life and culture publication. Rafi's work has appeared in Rolling Stone, GOOD and The Forward, among others.
