A veteran jazz ensemble announced on Monday it was canceling its New Year's Eve performances at the Kennedy Center, the latest group to withdraw from the Washington arts institution after it was renamed to include US President Donald Trump.
"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," the Cookers jazz ensemble said in a statement.
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."
Richard Grenell, a longtime ally of the US president whom Trump named as the center's president, said on Monday that such boycotts are a "form of derangement syndrome" and the cancellations are coming from artists booked by the institution's previous leadership. He has previously termed cancellations a "political stunt."
The withdrawal adds to a growing list of cancellations since the Center's board announced the name change this month, a move the Republican president filled with allies during a broad takeover earlier this year.
A Christmas Eve jazz concert was canceled last week, with the show's host, musician Chuck Redd, citing the name change.
The New York Times reported that Doug Varone and Dancers, a New York dance company, has pulled out of two April performances.
Democrats have called the decision by the board of the Kennedy Center to add Trump's name to the institution illegal. At the same time, John F. Kennedy’s family denounced the move as undermining the slain president's legacy.
The board voted to rename the arts venue The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, or Trump Kennedy Center for short.
Trump has been eager to put his stamp on Washington and his name on buildings in his second term. His critics say he has compromised institutions by installing loyalists and making funding threats.
The US President says he is tackling what he calls those institutions' liberal bias.
Kennedy Center sues musician for $1M in damages
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Venue President Richard Grenell has reportedly demanded $1 million dollars in damages from musician Chuck Redd, who cancelled the center’s traditional Christmas Eve performance last week.
The cancellation followed the White House’s decision last week to rename the center in honor of US President Donald Trump, the Associated Press reported on Friday.
“When I saw the name change on the Kennedy Center website and then hours later on the building, I chose to cancel our concert,” AP said, quoting an email written to them by Redd, adding that the cancelled Christmas Eve performance was a popular tradition which was why “it was one of the many reasons that it was very sad to have had to cancel.”
Grenell reportedly wrote a letter to Redd, shared with AP, slamming his decision to withdraw and cancel the performance at the last minute in response to the Center's renaming as "classic intolerance and very costly to a non-profit Arts institution."