The loss of this jazz tradition is a warning to every cultural institution that thinks it can “brand” its way into the future while leaving its history behind. Trust is a currency that is earned over decades and can be spent in a single afternoon. As the cold December wind whips across the Potomac, the Kennedy Center stands as a grand, marble shell—beautiful on the outside, but significantly quieter on the inside. The first lesson of 2025’s holiday season is a hard one: an institution can survive without a name, but it cannot survive without its soul.
If the music ever returns to that stage, it will have to be on terms that acknowledge the damage done. It will require more than a new marketing campaign; it will require a humble return to the artists and the audience who were left out in the cold. Until then, the silence remains the loudest performance of the year.
