Jazz musicians lawsuit after 'Trump Kennedy Center' pullout over renaming

Photo Credit: Mike Stoll

The cancellation of a jazz performance on Christmas Eve at the newly renamed ‘Trump Kennedy Center’ has prompted a lawsuit seeking $1 million in damages.

Musician Chuck Redd called off the performance after the Kennedy Center was renamed to include current President Donald Trump. The new name on the building’s facade is “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.” The president’s hand-picked board approved the decision—but many scholars say the naming violates the law.

“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 told the AP. Redd has presided over the ‘Jazz Jams’ holiday show at the Kennedy Center since 2006 after succeeding bassist William ‘Keter’ Betts.

The AP reported on the letter sent to Redd announcing the legal action. “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,” Richard Grenell writes. Grenell says he is seeking $1 million in damages for what he calls a “political stunt.”

President Trump named Richard Grenell the new president of the Kennedy Center after forcing out previous leadership earlier this year. The White House confirmed that the board approved the renaming. Meanwhile, Kennedy nieces Kerry Kennedy and Maria Shriver have vowed to remove the name from the building.

Maria Shriver also spoke out about seeing Trump’s name added to the center which is supposed to be a memorial to the former President Kennedy who was assassinated in 1963. Congress created a law in 1964 naming the center as a living memorial. This law explicitly forbids the board of trustees from making the center into a memorial for anyone else—including adorning another person’s name on the exterior. Lawmakers have also launched a lawsuit seeking to remove the president’s name from the building.