Thursday, December 18, 2025
A Kennedy Center Musician on What It’s Like There Now
washingtonian.com: On a blustery evening in October, Daniel Foster sat onstage at the Kennedy Center, viola in his lap. The National Symphony Orchestra was about to play “Don Juan,” an 1889 tone poem by Richard Strauss about a young libertine in search of the ideal woman. The opening is fiendishly tricky for viola. It has a fast and technical harmonic line that’s musically demanding and strange. Thirty years ago, in his audition to be the NSO’s principal violist, Foster played that excerpt. He won the job.
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Trump’s tirade against the arts is so tiring. The Kennedy Center did not need to be made ‘great again’, much less so by Trump. And even so, to immediately fire 18 members of the board to appoint himself as chairman does nothing to improve the quality (or quantity, or frankly any measure at all) of the art produced there. It just makes it pro-Trump, which is inherently anti-expression given the current state of legislation in the U.S.. I find no surprise in the decrease of attendance by 40%, but a certain level of shame tied to being an American, and a fear: this sets a precedent. Perhaps it had been set long before this, but regardless, Trump can take over artistic venues and companies to define their messages and stories. The story of Foster, the central figure in this article, is heartbreaking, but I can’t in good faith support an art that is within the tight grip of a dictator.
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