A veteran jazz ensemble announced on Monday it was canceling its New Year’s Eve performances at the Kennedy Center, the latest group to withdraw from the Washington arts institution after it was renamed to include U.S. President Donald Trump.
“Jazz was born from struggle and from a relentless insistence on freedom: freedom of thought, of expression, and of the full human voice. Some of us have been making this music for many decades, and that history still shapes us,” the Cookers jazz ensemble said in a statement.
The Kennedy Center had promoted two New Year’s Eve performances by the Cookers as an “all-star jazz septet that will ignite the Terrace Theater stage with fire and soul.”
Richard Grenell, a longtime ally of the U.S. president whom Trump named as the center’s president, said on Monday that such boycotts are a “form of derangement syndrome” and the cancelations are coming from artists booked by the institution’s previous leadership. He has previously termed cancelations a “political stunt.”
The withdrawal adds to a growing list of cancellations since the name change was announced this month by the Center’s board, which the Republican president filled with allies during a broad takeover earlier this year.
A Christmas Eve jazz concert was canceled last week, with the host of the show, musician Chuck Redd, attributing it to the name change. The New York Times reported that Doug Varone and Dancers, a New York dance company, has pulled out of two April performances. Democrats have called the decision by the board of the Kennedy Center to add Trump’s name to the institution illegal, while John F. Kennedy’s family denounced the move as undermining the slain president’s legacy.
The board voted to rename the arts venue The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, or Trump Kennedy Center for short.
Trump has been eager to put his stamp on Washington and his name on buildings in his second term. His critics say he has compromised institutions by installing loyalists and making funding threats. Trump says he is tackling what he calls those institutions’ liberal bias.
—Kanishka Singh, Reuters