A Trump-hating jazz musician did his best impression of the Grinch this holiday season, pulling out of a beloved annual Christmas Eve concert at the Trump-Kennedy Center because he was “saddened” by the venue’s name change announced last week.
The annual “Christmas Eve Jazz Jam” had been a holiday tradition in the nation’s capital for more than two decades, but this year the stage went dark after the host, drummer and vibraphone player Chuck Redd, decided seeing the president’s name on the building was more than he could bear.
“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 in a statement to the Associated Press.
“I’ve been performing at the Kennedy Center since the beginning of my career and I was saddened to see this name change,” Redd also told CNN.
The free concert, which was also slated to be livestreamed, was labeled “canceled” on the Trump-Kennedy Center website soon after Redd’s announcement.
The Trump-Kennedy Center and Redd did not respond to The Post’s requests for comment.
On Dec. 18, the performing arts venue’s board of trustees announced it had “unanimously” voted to add Trump’s name to the building, causing an uproar among the president’s critics.
Trump claimed to reporters that he was “surprised” and “honored” by the name change, despite dangling the possibility for months.
In August, for example, the president remarked that “some people refer to it as the Trump-Kennedy Center, but we’re not prepared to do that quite yet.”“Maybe in a week or so.”
Earlier this month, Trump had said during an aside in a speech on peace efforts in Africa: “There’s a big event on Friday at the Trump-Kennedy Center — excuse me, at the Kennedy Center.”
Democratic congressional leaders and other critics of the rebrand contend that the board does not have the authority to unilaterally rename the performing arts center, which opened in 1971 in honor of the late President John F. Kennedy.
Shortly after being sworn into his second term, Trump purged the center’s board of all of former President Joe Biden’s picks and appointed himself chairman while naming staunch ally Ric Grenell as interim executive director.
The president also loaded the board with new hand-picked members — including Attorney General Pam Bondi, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, second lady Usha Vance, and Fox News personalities Maria Bartiromo and Laura Ingraham — saying the previous leadership allowed inappropriate shows that were “specifically targeting our youth.”
Besides naming himself chairman and remaking the board, Trump also indicated he would take over decisions regarding programming at the center and vowed to end events featuring performers in drag.
“Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda and other artists announced in response to Trump’s actions that they will not run musical productions, concerts or hold events at the venue.
Grenell charged in March that the decision made clear that the objectors “don’t want Republicans” at any of their shows.
“The Arts are for everyone – not just for the people who Lin likes and agrees with,” Grenell said at the time.
“The American people need to know that [Miranda] is intolerant of people who don’t agree with him politically,” he continued.
