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The president of the Kennedy Center is seeking $1million from a musician who cancelled a Christmas Eve show after Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s name\u00a0was\u00a0added to\u00a0the\u00a0building.<\/p>\n Last week (December 19), the board that presides over the Washington D.C. arts\u00a0centre, which is closely allied with Trump,\u00a0voted to rename the building as the Trump Kennedy Center<\/a>, prompting\u00a0jazz musician Chuck Redd to cancel an annual Christmas Eve show.<\/p>\n Redd has overseen the Jazz Jams at the venue during the holiday season since 2006, but after\u00a0learning of\u00a0the renaming decision, he decided to call off the\u00a0show\u00a0this time around.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I saw the name change on the Kennedy Center website and then hours later on the building, I chose to cancel our concert,\u201d Redd said.<\/p>\n Now, the venue\u2019s president Richard Grenell has strongly\u00a0criticised\u00a0Redd\u2019s decision and demanded $1million (\u00a3740,000) in damages for what he has described as a \u201cpolitical stunt\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cYour decision to withdraw at the last moment \u2013\u00a0explicitly in response to the Center\u2019s recent renaming, which honors President Trump\u2019s extraordinary efforts to save this national treasure \u2013\u00a0is classic intolerance and very costly to a non-profit Arts institution,\u201d he said (via\u00a0Associated Press<\/i><\/a>).<\/p>\n Redd has not responded to requests for comment.<\/p>\n Democrats have already filed a lawsuit to remove Trump\u2019s name from the building, with Representative Joyce Beatty, who is\u00a0designated\u00a0a member of the board by law,\u00a0describing the change as unlawful as any renaming of the\u00a0centre\u00a0would require an act of Congress (via\u00a0BBC<\/i><\/a>).<\/p>\n The venue was originally named after\u00a0John F. Kennedy\u00a0in\u00a01964 as a \u201cliving memorial\u201d\u00a0to the assassinated former\u00a0president,\u00a0and\u00a0his niece Kerry Kennedy\u00a0has also vowed to remove the Trump name once he leaves office.<\/p>\n Earlier this year it was reported that the\u00a0producers of the musical\u00a0Hamilton\u00a0<\/i>had cancelled their production at The Kennedy Center<\/a>, due to Trump taking control of the venue, while in June, Trump was greeted by drag queens and\u00a0booed during his first visit to the Center since installing himself as chairman<\/a>.<\/p>\n Elsewhere, Jimmy Kimmel delivered a scathing anti-Trump alternative Christmas message for UK viewers<\/a> on Channel 4 this week, saying: \u201cfrom a fascism perspective, this has been a really great year\u201d.<\/p>\n The post Kennedy Center seeks $1million from musician who cancelled Christmas Eve show after Donald Trump\u2019s name added to building<\/a> appeared first on NME<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The president of the Kennedy Center is seeking $1million from a musician who cancelled a Christmas Eve show after Donald Trump\u2019s name\u00a0was\u00a0added to\u00a0the\u00a0building. Last week (December 19), the board that presides over the Washington D.C. arts\u00a0centre, which is closely allied with Trump,\u00a0voted to rename the building as the Trump Kennedy Center, prompting\u00a0jazz musician Chuck Redd […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-art"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-10-25 13:49:16","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38866\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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