Add another name to the ever-growing list as singer-actress Renée Fleming is the most recent act to cancel performances on the John F. Kennedy Heart for the Performing Arts.
Fleming has axed two upcoming dates scheduled for Could twenty ninth and thirtieth, citing a “scheduling battle.” Different individuals, conductor James Gaffigan and the Nationwide Symphony Orchestra, stay on the invoice for these dates, and “a brand new soloist and repertoire shall be introduced at a later date,” in keeping with the Kennedy Center website.
As Rolling Stone identified, Fleming’s canceled dates comply with her 2025 resignation because the Kennedy Heart’s Inventive Advisor-at-Massive. Having held that position since 2016, Fleming seemingly left within the wake of large-scale “shakeups” on the Kennedy Heart, together with the pressured departures of each President Deborah Rutter and Chair David Rubenstein.
Associated Video
All of those cancelations and organizational adjustments come from, you guessed it, Donald Trump himself. In early 2025, Trump not solely ousted the board (in what some information shops referred to as a “purge”), but additionally named himself the Kennedy Heart chairman. Then, towards the tip of final 12 months, he and his board of “hand-selected” members modified the identify to the Trump-Kennedy Memorial Center.
As talked about, Fleming joins fairly the prolonged checklist of abilities who’ve canceled gigs or in any other case walked away from obligations with the Kennedy Heart. That features Béla Fleck, The Cookers, a touring manufacturing of Hamilton, Rhiannon Giddens, and the Washington Nationwide Opera, which ended a 55-year association. In the meantime, Ben Folds departed as one other creative adviser, and Shonda Rhimes resigned from the board of trustees.
The Kennedy Heart’s response to those strikes and cancellations has been precisely what you’d count on. In a social media post from earlier this month, Kennedy Heart President Ric Grenell mentioned that “the artists who at the moment are canceling reveals had been booked by the earlier far left management. Their actions show that the earlier workforce was extra involved about reserving far left political activists fairly than artists keen to carry out for everybody no matter their political opinions.”
