Audience boos JD Vance at classical concert following Donald Trump’s Kennedy Center takeover

14 March 2025, 11:00

JD Vance booed as he attends Kennedy Center concert

The US Vice President was booed at a classical concert at the Kennedy Center, Washington D.C.’s renowned arts venue of which Donald Trump is now chair.

JD Vance, Vice President of the United States of America, was booed while attending a classical concert at Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center with his wife, Usha, on Thursday evening.

The concert featured Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No.2, performed by soloist Leonidas Kavakos, followed by Stravinsky’s Petrushka. Both works were performed by the National Symphony Orchestra, who are resident ensemble at the Kennedy Center alongside the Washington Opera.

As audience members spotted the VP in a box, he was met with a massed chorus of jeers, drowning out the usual pre-concert announcements.

Richard Grenell, interim director of the Kennedy Center who was appointed by President Donald Trump, later said the crowd was “intolerant”.

The centre, which hosts around 2,000 performances a year, was recently taken over by Donald Trump, who fired its chairman and 13 trustees. The President then appointed new board members including Usha Vance, who was on the board of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra from 2020 to 2022, and was elected the new chair.

Read more: Concertgoer falls asleep in Stravinsky’s The Firebird, wakes up with a shriek

“So we took over the Kennedy Center,” the President said at the time. “We didn’t like what they were showing and various other things. We’re going to make sure that it’s good and it’s not going to be woke. There’s no more woke in this country.”

Since the takeover, the venue has withdrawn concerts including the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, children’s musical Finn, and The International Pride Orchestra.

In response, German violinist Christian Tetzlaff and other musicians have cancelled their performances, and artist director Renée Fleming, the renowned American soprano, resigned.

Pioneering conductor Marin Alsop chose to go ahead with a planned date – conducting the National Symphony Orchestra in Julia Wolfe’s Her Story, a work featuring real-life letters and speeches from the fight for women’s rights, performed by 10 women vocalists alongside the orchestra.

“I think it’s really important, especially in this time, that we remember and celebrate the importance of art in our lives,” Alsop told NPR. “Art is about the human spirit, the human soul, and the human condition. And it also connects us. And it’s bipartisan. Music, art – these are not partisan issues.”