Celebrated banjo participant Béla Fleck, performing on the 67th Annual GRAMMY Awards Premiere Ceremony in Los Angeles in Feb. 2025.
Leon Bennett/Getty Pictures
cover caption
toggle caption
Leon Bennett/Getty Pictures
The famous banjo participant Béla Fleck has canceled three performances scheduled for subsequent month with the Nationwide Symphony Orchestra, or NSO, on the John F. Kennedy Middle for the Performing Arts. Fleck, who has gained 18 Grammy Awards and infrequently performs with symphonies across the nation, is the newest artist to cancel engagements on the Kennedy Middle amidst many administrative and curatorial modifications on the Washington, D.C. arts advanced.
In a put up printed to social media Tuesday night, Fleck wrote: “I’ve withdrawn from my upcoming efficiency with the NSO at The Kennedy Middle. Performing there has grow to be charged and political, at an establishment the place the main focus ought to be on the music. I sit up for enjoying with the NSO one other time sooner or later once we can collectively share and have a good time artwork.”
The Nationwide Symphony Orchestra didn’t reply to requests for a response to Fleck’s determination to cancel. Tuesday night, nevertheless, the middle’s president, Richard Grenell, wrote on X: “You simply made it political and caved to the woke mob who needs you to carry out for under Lefties. This mob pressuring you’ll by no means be glad till you solely play for Democrats. The Trump Kennedy Middle believes all persons are welcome — Democrats and Republicans and folks tired of politics. We wish performers who aren’t political — who merely love entertaining everybody no matter who they voted for.”
The Kennedy Middle referred NPR to Grenell’s put up on X and to a handful of replies on X made by people cheering on Grenell’s message.
In an announcement emailed to NPR Wednesday morning, Fleck responded to Grenell, writing: “I did not make it political, it already was— and there was no mob pressuring me. Music ought to be about expression, creativity and inclusivity. This present dialogue does not appear to be about any of these issues.”
In February 2025, Trump fired the middle’s former president, Deborah Rutter, ousted David Rubenstein, the middle’s earlier board chair, together with board members appointed by President Joe Biden, and appointed a brand new board slate that features second woman Usha Vance, White Home chief of employees Susie Wiles and Fox Information host Laura Ingraham. That board then named Trump chair of the Kennedy Middle. Final month, the board voted to add President Trump’s identify to the establishment, though it has but to be formally renamed by Congress. Democratic Congresswoman Joyce Beatty, who’s an ex officio board member of the middle, has filed a lawsuit difficult the renaming.
A line of cancellations
Fleck is the newest in a line of performers who’ve canceled engagements to carry out on the Kennedy Middle amidst the tumult. On Jan. 2, the celebrated musical theater composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz, whose reveals embrace Depraved, Pippin and Godspell, mentioned he was withdrawing from plans to host a gala fundraiser in Might for the Washington Nationwide Opera, which just like the Nationwide Symphony Orchestra has its residence on the Kennedy Middle.
Final month, the jazz drummer and vibraphonist Chuck Redd canceled his annual Christmas Eve present on the Kennedy Middle; in response, the Kennedy Middle introduced it will file a $1 million lawsuit towards Redd. Days later, the jazz septet The Cookers equally withdrew from their New Yr’s Eve Kennedy Middle present, as did the dance ensemble Doug Varone and Dancers, who had been slated to carry out there in April.
Nearly a yr in the past, after Trump introduced his plans to supervise the Kennedy Middle, there was a spate of different cancellations, together with deliberate performances of the Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning musical Hamilton; a present by Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy Award-winning musician and composer Rhiannon Giddens; and an look by the actor Issa Rae, who’s co-creator and a author for the tv sequence Insecure.
This story was edited for digital by Jennifer Vanasco.
