Two more artistic groups announced that they have canceled upcoming performances at the Kennedy Center, adding to a growing list of acts that have chosen not to perform at the storied institution after its board of directors announced earlier this month that it would add President Donald Trump’s name to the venue.
Jazz supergroup the Cookers, scheduled to perform two concerts at the Kennedy Center on Wednesday as part of “A Jazz New Year’s Eve,” have canceled both shows, the band announced on Monday. Doug Varone and Dancers, a decades-old performance group, also said on Monday that they had decided to cancel two performances scheduled for April.
“While we totally disagreed with the takeover by the Trump Administration at the Kennedy Center, we still believed it was important to honor our engagement out of respect for both Jane Raleigh and Alicia Adams, who curated a first-rate dance season, as well as for the dance audiences in DC,” the dance company said on social media, referencing two prominent former employees who are reportedly no longer with the institution. “However, with the latest act of Donald J. Trump renaming the Center after himself, we can no longer permit ourselves nor ask our audiences to step inside this once great institution.”
The board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts voted earlier this month to rename the institution the Trump-Kennedy Center, an unprecedented change for the U.S. presidential memorial that drew swift condemnation from Kennedy family members and Democratic leaders. Trump’s name was added to the exterior of the building a day after the board’s vote. Some legal experts have said that only Congress can change the center’s official name.
The cancellations on Monday came days after musician Chuck Redd pulled out of his annual Christmas Eve jazz concert, and after folk singer Kristy Lee announced she had canceled a concert scheduled for mid-January.
“When American history starts getting treated like something you can ban, erase, rename, or rebrand for somebody else’s ego, I can’t stand on that stage and sleep right at night,” Lee wrote on social media last week.
A production of the musical “Hamilton,” a concert by Grammy and Pulitzer Prize-winning folk musician Rhiannon Giddens and a show by comedian and television producer Issa Rae that were set to take place at the center were canceled earlier in the year, after Trump’s takeover of the institution in February.
A statement posted on the Cookers’ website did not explicitly mention Trump or the Kennedy Center, but said, “Jazz was born from struggle and from a relentless insistence on freedom: freedom of thought, of expression, and of the full human voice.”
“To everyone who is disappointed or upset, we understand and share your sadness. We remain committed to playing music that reaches across divisions rather than deepening them,” the statement read.
Cookers band member David Weiss declined to comment further when reached by email.
Saxophonist Billy Harper, a member of the Cookers who played in groups with Art Blakey and Max Roach, was more explicit about not wanting to perform at the Kennedy Center in an interview quoted on the Facebook group Jazz Stage on Saturday.
“I would never even consider performing in a venue bearing a name (and being controlled by the kind of board) that represents overt racism and deliberate destruction of African American music and culture,” he said. “… After all the years I spent working with some of the greatest heroes of the anti-racism fight like Max Roach and Randy Weston and Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Stanley Cowell, I know they would be turning in their graves to see me stand on a stage under such circumstances and betray all we fought for, and sacrificed for.”
Kennedy Center President Richard Grenell, a Trump appointee, responded to the cancellations with a post on social media Monday evening, saying, “The arts are for everyone and the left is mad about it.”
“The artists who are now canceling shows were booked by the previous far left leadership. Their actions prove that the previous team was more concerned about booking far left political activists rather than artists willing to perform for everyone regardless of their political beliefs,” he said in a statement. “Boycotting the Arts to show you support the Arts is a form of derangement syndrome.”
