What’s in a Name? Cancellations

By Michael J. West I Jan. 6, 2026

Vibraphonist Chuck Redd found himself in the midst of a political firestorm after canceling his gig Dec. 24 at the newly renamed Trump Kennedy Center.
(Photo: Courtesy chuckredd.com)

The Board of Trustees at Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts voted on Dec. 18 to rename the Center to include sitting U.S. President Donald Trump’s appellation. The change caused an immediate outcry within both artistic and political circles. (Among other things, the legality of the name change is being challenged.) When the Center rolled out new digital and physical signage the next day, vibraphonist Chuck Redd canceled his annual Christmas performance.

Redd, 67, is a respected D.C. jazz staple whose resume includes tours with Ray Brown, Charlie Byrd, Dizzy Gillespie and Ken Peplowski. Each year since 2006 he has led a Christmas Eve jam session at the Kennedy Center’s free-admission Millennium Stage, which seats about 200 people. This year, however, “When I saw the name change on the Kennedy Center website and then hours later on the building, I chose to cancel the concert,” he said in a statement to the Associated Press.

That cancellation created a firestorm that landed on the front pages of most every news outlet in America and beyond. Jazz artists from around the world took to social media to voice support for Redd, even calling him a “hero.” (Redd has declined to comment further.) The Kennedy Center’s acting president and executive director Ric Grenell and vice president of public relations Roma Daravi both issued outraged statements.

Grenell announced the Center’s intention to sue Redd for $1 million in damages. “Your dismal ticket sales and lack of donor support, combined with your last-minute cancellation has cost us considerably,” he said. (How Redd achieved “dismal ticket sales” on a free concert was left unexplained.)

Daravi’s statement was directed at a broader audience. “Any artist cancelling their show at the Trump Kennedy Center over political differences isn’t courageous or principled,” she said. “They are selfish, intolerant and have failed to meet the basic duty of a public artist: to perform for all people.”

This did not have the intended effect. On Dec. 29 — two days after Daravi’s statement — jazz supergroup The Cookers announced that it had canceled its gala New Year’s Eve performance.

“We are not turning away from our audience,” the band said in a statement on its website. “Our hope is that this moment will leave space for reflection, not resentment.”

Separately, Cookers drummer Billy Hart confirmed to the New York Times that the cancellation was “evidently” connected to the Kennedy Center’s name change. Tenor saxophonist Billy Harper, a former member of the band, said on Facebook that “I would never even consider performing in a venue bearing a name that represents overt racism. 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, but also betraying all the listeners that believed (and still do) in our cause and our music.”

In addition, Alabama folk singer Kristy Lee and New York dance company Doug Varone and Dancers on Monday pulled the plug on their own planned Kennedy Center performances during the 2025–’26 season. “We can no longer permit ourselves nor ask our audiences to step inside this once great institution,” said Varone.

Neither Grenell nor Daravi has commented further on these cancellations.

As of today (Dec. 31), the Kennedy Center’s New Year’s Eve calendar offers what it calls “The Speakeasy” at its rooftop terrace bar: “an afterhours jazz club hidden in the sky.” Specific performers are not mentioned, though the event’s web page features videos of drummer Sammy Miller (now the Kennedy Center’s director of music programming after his predecessor, Kevin Struthers, was terminated in September) and his Congregation. The majority of the Center’s jazz season for 2026 is currently scheduled to take place on the free Millennium Stage. DB