A leading jazz ensemble has canceled two New Year’s Eve shows at the Trump-Kennedy Center in the wake of the renaming of the institution.
The Cookers gave no specific reason Monday for the decision, only saying it “has come together very quickly.”
The band wrote on its website:
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. We are not turning away from our audience, and do want to make sure that when we do return to the bandstand, the room is able to celebrate the full presence of the music and everyone in it.
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.”
The Washington, DC, center offered no public comment in response to the cancelation.
As Breitbart News reported, a decision was made earlier this month that the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts will now bear the names of two American presidents after its board of trustees voted unanimously to rename it, “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”
‘I Was Very Honored By It’ Trump Reacts to the Newly-Renamed Trump-Kennedy Center
The board’s unanimous decision recognizes Chairman Donald J. Trump’s role in saving the institution from what Roma Daravi, Vice President of Public Relations at the Trump-Kennedy Center, described as “financial ruin and physical destruction.”
Many artists have since dropped their shows from the list at the center in protest at the renaming, as Breitbart News reported.
In one instance, Trump-Kennedy Center President Ric Grenell said he is filing a lawsuit against a jazz musician who abruptly canceled this year’s annual “Christmas Eve Jazz Jam” due to Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS).
Musician Chuck Redd, this year’s host of the annual Christmas Eve concert, was specific for his reasons.
“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 just hours before the event was scheduled to take place.
Kari Lake: Trump is ‘Depoliticizing’ Kennedy Center
Grenell, who has worked assiduously to restore the struggling institution, is not taking the politically motivated cancellation lying down.
“Your dismal ticket sales and lack of donor support, combined with your last-minute cancellation has cost us considerably,” Grenell wrote in a letter to Redd obtained by Breitbart News. “This is your official notice that we will seek $1 million in damages from you for this political stunt.”
Grenell hammered the artist for hurting an institution created to promote the arts throughout the nation, not to serve as an insulated haven for liberal elites.
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