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The musician Chuck Redd called off the annual Christmas Eve performances after the Kennedy Center board added President Trump’s name to the performing arts center.
Crews added President Trump’s name to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Dec. 19.Credit...Eric Lee for The New York Times
Dec. 27, 2025, 12:22 a.m. ET
The leader of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington has sent a letter threatening litigation against a musician who canceled an annual Christmas Eve jazz concert at the institution.
Richard Grenell, the Kennedy Center’s president, sent the letter after the musician, Chuck Redd, canceled the…
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The musician Chuck Redd called off the annual Christmas Eve performances after the Kennedy Center board added President Trump’s name to the performing arts center.
Crews added President Trump’s name to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Dec. 19.Credit...Eric Lee for The New York Times
Dec. 27, 2025, 12:22 a.m. ET
The leader of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington has sent a letter threatening litigation against a musician who canceled an annual Christmas Eve jazz concert at the institution.
Richard Grenell, the Kennedy Center’s president, sent the letter after the musician, Chuck Redd, canceled the concert in protest of the site’s new name, the Trump-Kennedy Center.
Mr. Redd had hosted the show for nearly two decades. But he said he would not hold the concert after the members of the center’s board of trustees, handpicked by President Trump, voted last week to change the name.
Mr. Grenell, whom Mr. Trump appointed to lead Kennedy Center as part of his second-term takeover of the institution, asserted that Mr. Redd had engaged in “sad bullying tactics employed by certain elements on the left.”
“Your decision to withdraw at the last moment — explicitly in response to the Center’s recent renaming, which honors President Trump’s extraordinary efforts to save this national treasure — is classic intolerance and very costly to a non-profit Arts institution,” Mr. Grenell wrote.
He added, “This is your official notice that we will seek $1 million in damages from you for this political stunt.”
The letter was sent Friday, according to the Kennedy Center, which provided a copy to The New York Times. The Associated Press previously reported on the letter.
Mr. Redd did not immediately reply to a request for comment Friday night.
Until this year, the Kennedy Center was governed by a bipartisan board, but Mr. Trump pushed out trustees who were appointed by Democrats.
In Mr. Trump’s first term, he broke with precedent and did not attend the Kennedy Center Honors, where some honorees criticized him. In his second term, he has taken the opposite approach: He hosted the honors himself this month.
And six days before Christmas, lettering was affixed to the facade of the building, leaving the following words, “THE DONALD J. TRUMP AND THE JOHN F. KENNEDY MEMORIAL CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS.”
Mr. Trump, who had been calling for the center to be renamed for months, expressed surprise that his handpicked board had moved to change the name. “I was surprised by it,” he told reporters. “I was honored by it.”
The renaming prompted a lawsuit from Representative Joyce Beatty, Democrat of Ohio, asserting that an act of Congress is required to change the name.
In 1964, Congress designated the center as a memorial to President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated a year earlier. It opened in 1971 with the premiere performance of Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass,” which was commissioned by Kennedy’s widow, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
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