A veteran jazz ensemble and a New York dance company have canceled events at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, intensifying the fallout at one of the nation’s pre-eminent arts centers after it was renamed to include President Trump.
The center had previously 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.” But those performances, like an annual Christmas Eve jazz concert hosted by Chuck Redd, are now canceled.
The Cookers did not give a reason for the decision in a statement on Monday that said, “Jazz was born from struggle and from a relentless insistence on freedom: freedom of thought, of expression, and of the full human voice.”
But the band’s drummer, Billy Hart, told The New York Times that the center’s name change had “evidently” played a role. He acknowledged that the group was concerned about possible reprisals.
The Kennedy Center was created with that name by an act of Congress: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/20/76i
Much like the Department of Defense, it must be renamed by Congress.
I have to say, even if they’d changed it legally, it would not diminish my disgust one bit. To name something so public, that you had no part in creating, after yourself is the ultimate … tastelessness, fuck you to the plebs, loser move, etc.
It’s also aggravating because you only name a memorial after dead people.
That was included in my statement: you can only name something after yourself while you’re still alive. According to currently accepted hard facts, at least.
But let the pejoratives come, my brain blanked when I got to that.
Thanks! I didn’t know this. Especially about the department of defense.