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“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,” the venue's president, Richard Grenell, wrote in a
letter to musician Chuck Redd that was shared with The
Associated Press.
In the letter, Grenell said he would seek $1 million in damages
“for this political stunt.”
Redd did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A drummer and vibraphone player, Redd has presided over holiday
“Jazz Jams” at the Kennedy Center since 2006, succeeding bassist
William “Keter” Betts. In an email Wednesday to The Associated
Press, Redd said he pulled out of the concert in the wake of the
renaming.
“When I saw the name change on the Kennedy Center website and
then hours later on the building, I chose to cancel our
concert,” Redd said. He added Wednesday that the event has been
a “very popular holiday tradition” and that he often featured at
least one student musician.
“One of the many reasons that it was very sad to have had to
cancel,” he told the AP.
President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, and Congress
passed a law the following year naming the center as a living
memorial to him.
Grenell is a Trump ally whom the president chose to head the
Kennedy Center after he forced out the previous leadership.
According to the White House, Trump's handpicked board approved
the renaming, which scholars have said violates the law. Kennedy
niece Kerry Kennedy has vowed to remove Trump’s name from the
building once he leaves office, and former House historian Ray
Smock is among those who say any changes would have to be
approved by Congress.
The law explicitly prohibits the board of trustees from making
the center into a memorial to anyone else, and from putting
another person’s name on the building’s exterior.
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Associated Press writer Hillel Italie in New York contributed to
this report.
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