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President Donald Trump’s kennedy center Executives demanded $1 million from a musician after he refused to perform at a Washington, D.C., arts venue. Recently renamed.
Drummer and vibraphonist Chuck Redd, 67, has long been the host of the Kennedy Center’s Christmas Eve Jazz Concert, but he Event canceled soon after venue board It was announced that the iconic venue would be renamed to include the president’s name. The venue is very new, Currently unofficialtitled the “Donald Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”
Current Chairman of the Kennedy Center Richard Grenell He also served in Trump’s first administration and was appointed in February after a majority of the board threatened to sue the musician for quitting the show.
“Your last-minute decision to withdraw — expressly in response to the center’s recent renaming to honor President Trump’s extraordinary efforts to save this national treasure — is a classic act of intolerance and costly for a nonprofit arts institution,” Grenell reportedly wrote in a letter to Reade. washington post.
Grenell wrote that the letter was Reade’s “formal notice that we are seeking $1 million in damages from you for this political stunt.”
Redd, who has shared the stage with jazz greats including Charlie Bird, Dizzy Gillespie and Barney Kessel, confirmed he was withdrawing from the event because he objected to the name change.
“When I saw the name change last Friday, I did choose to cancel the Kennedy Center Christmas Eve Jazz Performance,” Reade told us CNN in a statement. “I have been performing at the Kennedy Center since the beginning of my career and I am sad to see the name change.”
Roma Daravi, vice president of public relations for the Kennedy Center, complained in an email to the Kennedy Center washington post Artists who refuse to perform live due to political differences lack principles.
“Any artist who cancels a show at the Trump Kennedy Center due to political differences is not brave or unprincipled — they are selfish, intolerant, and failing in the fundamental obligation of a public artist: to perform for all,” Dharavi said.
Grenell said in an article X posts He “will not let” artists cancel their Kennedy Center shows “without any consequences.”
“The left is boycotting the arts because Trump supports the arts. But we won’t let them cancel shows without consequences,” Grenell wrote. “Art is for everyone — and the left is angry about it.”
The Kennedy Center was established by Congress as the cultural and artistic center of the United States. It was named after Kennedy in 1964 and became a memorial hall.
Trump hosted the center’s annual honors event last week. The event is usually televised, but this year’s show Ratings dropped 35% Reportedly, Trump is at the helm.
The center’s new Trump-picked board of directors voted last week to rename it, placing Trump’s name before Kennedy’s, but the move has already been questioned by Congresswoman Joyce Beatty. She filed the lawsuit Monday, claiming action by Congress is needed to officially change the center’s name.
Members of the Kennedy family – including the former president’s niece Maria Shriver and former Democratic congressman Joe Kennedy – have criticized Trump for pinning their names to their relatives’ memorials.
“It’s incomprehensible that this sitting president is trying to rename this great monument dedicated to President Kennedy. It’s just crazy that he thinks it’s acceptable to put his own name in front of President Kennedy’s,” Shriver wrote on Instagram. “It’s not.”
It’s not just musicians and Kennedy relatives who oppose Trump’s intervention at the Kennedy Center. Event ticket sales have plummeted since Trump replaced the previous board of directors with loyalists. washington post.
Tickets for orchestra, theater and dance performances are lower this year than before the coronavirus pandemic, the report found.
At least 20 production companies canceled or postponed shows in response to a Trump board shakeup in February.