"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."
"Citing drag shows and "anti-American propaganda," he fired 18 Biden-appointed members of the board and made himself its chairman, vowing to rid the institution's programming of anything woke. The fallout was intense. Performers canceled, employees resigned. Then the boycotts began. The Kennedy Center-home to the National Symphony Orchestra and Washington National Opera, host to an array of high-wattage touring acts-typically operates near capacity. By fall, attendance was down almost 40 percent."
Daniel Foster is the National Symphony Orchestra's principal violist who won the job thirty years ago after playing the fiendishly tricky opening excerpt of Strauss's Don Juan. Foster loves Strauss's demanding, wide-ranging writing and often performs Don Juan to large houses, yet recently he observed deserted balconies and clusters of empty seats at the Kennedy Center. In February, Donald Trump pledged to "make the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., GREAT AGAIN," fired 18 Biden-appointed board members, made himself chairman, and vowed to remove programming deemed "woke." Performers canceled, employees resigned, boycotts began, and by fall attendance had fallen almost 40 percent.
Read at Washingtonian - The website that Washington lives by.
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