Kennedy Center Holiday Concert Canceled After Host Pulls Out Over Trump Name Change
The Christmas Eve concert has been a holiday tradition for more than 20 years.
Shannon Finney/WireImage
A Christmas Eve jazz concert was scrapped after President Donald Trump added his name to the Kennedy Center.
Chuck Redd, a jazz drummer and vibraphonist who has hosted the concert for nearly a decade, said Friday that he would call off the performance after the White House announced that the iconic venue would be rebranded as the Trump–Kennedy Center.
“When I saw the name change on the Kennedy Center website and then hours later on the building, I chose to cancel our concert,” Redd told the Associated Press in an email.
President Donald J. Trump hosted the 48th annual Kennedy Center honors.
CBS Photo Archive/Mary Kouw/CBS via Getty Images
The venue name change was approved on Dec. 18 by a board of MAGA loyalists appointed by Trump, 79, after he became chair of the board in February.
Since the name change—which now appears on the building’s façade reading The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts—an ex officio trustee, Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty, 75, filed a lawsuit arguing that the change is void because only Congress can amend the center’s name by statute.
The canceled jazz concert has been a holiday tradition for more than 20 years.
Redd’s decision comes after folk singer Kristy Lee canceled her performance at the center, which had been scheduled for Jan. 14.
“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 in a statement on Facebook about her decision.
Other artists who have canceled shows at the center following the name change include Issa Rae and Peter Wolf, as well as Lin-Manuel Miranda’s planned production of Hamilton.
The building’s façade now reads The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.
Heather Diehl/Getty Images
The Kennedy Center was established through bipartisan legislation to create a National Cultural Center in Washington, D.C., which was signed into law in 1958 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1962, President John F. Kennedy launched a $30 million fundraising campaign for the center’s construction.
The center was named after President Kennedy following his assassination, through an Act of Congress signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.
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The Daily Beast has contacted the Kennedy Center for comment regarding the cancellation of the jazz concert, but did not receive an immediate response.
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