The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, lit in the colors of the annual Kennedy Center Honors.
In Friday’s (4/25) Washington Post, Michael Andor Brodeur writes, “ ‘If sometimes our great artists have been the most critical of our society, it is because [of] their sensitivity and their concern for justice, which must motivate any true artist …,’ President John F. Kennedy wrote…. His words … are chiseled into the Kennedy Center’s walls … A round of layoffs across the Kennedy Center’s government, media and marketing staffs this past week were just the most recent shake-ups at the center since President Donald Trump effectively appointed himself as chair and installed Richard Grenell as interim executive director…. [Their vision] won’t just affect what artists and performances come to the center’s stages; it will reshape the story of American performing arts that the Kennedy Center has spent decades telling…. Like many orchestras, the National Symphony Orchestra has taken steps over the past few years to diversify its repertoire, commissioning new works by composers including Carlos Simon, Adolphus Hailstork, Tania León, Billy Childs, Anna Clyne and Julia Wolfe. (According to recent statistics from the League of American Orchestras, works by women and composers of color account for 22.6 percent of U.S. orchestras’ programming, up from 4.5 percent in 2015-2016.) But under maestro Gianandrea Noseda, the NSO has also attempted to fill in some historical blanks. His ‘Beethoven and American Masters’ series with the NSO in 2023 situated a cycle of the composer’s well-known symphonies alongside a companion cycle of” works by Black composers including George Walker and William Grant Still. “The NSO has also offered me some of my first encounters with the music of composers who have only recently found their way into the repertoire through scholarship and a mix of fortitude and fortune: Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, and … Florence Price…. Outside organizations … have contributed to a culture of historical exploration and expansion at the Kennedy Center. Nothing radical, just a relatively gentle zoom-out, a widening of the frame that allows for a broader landscape.”
