National Symphony Orchestra Principal Viola Daniel Foster at the Kennedy Center, in a photo taken before it was renamed “The Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts” on December 18. Photo by Evy Mages.
In Wednesday’s (12/17) Washingtonian, Sylvia McNamara writes, “In his 30 years with National Symphony Orchestra, violist Daniel Foster has performed [Strauss’s] ‘Don Juan’ at various points, and always, the house was nearly full. But lately, crowds at the Kennedy Center have thinned…. In February, just weeks after his inauguration, Donald Trump pledged to ‘make the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., GREAT AGAIN.’… The Kennedy Center—home to the National Symphony Orchestra and Washington National Opera, host to an array of high-wattage touring acts—typically operates near capacity. By fall, attendance was down almost 40 percent…. As an orchestral violist, Foster spent his life in a notably apolitical job…. ‘Right now, I’m doubling down on what I’m there to do, which is what I love to do: I have music to prepare,’ Foster said in November, amid a drumbeat of dire news stories about the Kennedy Center’s financial decline… If audiences continue to boycott the Kennedy Center, he’s concerned about collateral damage to the orchestra … His first teacher was his father, William Foster, a violist who had joined the National Symphony in 1968…. After graduating [from Oberlin], he got a job in the NSO’s viola section, where he played alongside his dad…. They were colleagues for 25 years.” Note: this article appeared on December 17, the day before the Kennedy Center board voted to rename the Center as the “Trump-Kennedy” Center.
