More artists are pulling out of performing at the Kennedy Center after the prestigious cultural arts hub was renamed to honor President Donald Trump.
The Cookers canceled two shows scheduled for New Year’s Eve, the acclaimed jazz ensemble announced on Monday. Drummer Billy Hart told the New York Times that the historic arts center’s recent name change “evidently” played a factor in the last-minute decision, which echoed musician Chuck Redd’s move to abruptly cancel the Kennedy Center’s annual Christmas Eve “Jazz Jams” he had overseen since 2006.
“This decision has come together very quickly, and we understand how frustrating last‑minute changes can be,” the group said in a statement. “We remain committed to playing music that reaches across divisions rather than deepening them.”
The Cookers’ announcement follows similar moves by several other artists to pull out of scheduled events.
Aside from Redd, who is facing a lawsuit by the Trump-Kennedy Center for declining to perform on Christmas Eve, folk singer Kristy Lee announced she had canceled a concert scheduled for mid-January, expressing concern about “political branding” and American history “getting treated like something you can ban, erase, rename, or rebrand for somebody else’s ego.” And Doug Varone and Dancers said this week that it is canceling two performances in April. The New York dance company cited “the latest act of Donald J. Trump renaming the Center after himself” as the reason for its announcement.
The arts center has been shrouded in controversy since Trump took over the institution earlier this year.
The debate surrounding Trump’s influence over the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts was renewed on Dec. 18, when the center’s board of trustees “unanimously” voted to add Trump’s name to the institution’s title.
Trump-Kennedy Center President Richard Grenell has defended the name change in the face of cancellations, saying Monday that “the arts are for everyone and the left is mad about it.”
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“The artists who are now canceling shows were booked by the previous far-left leadership. Their actions prove that the previous team was more concerned about booking far-left political activists rather than artists willing to perform for everyone regardless of their political beliefs,” he said in a statement to X. “Boycotting the Arts to show you support the Arts is a form of derangement syndrome.”
The Washington Examiner reached out to the Kennedy Center for comment.