English translation below
Da Donald Trump blev indsat som præsident i starten af året, satte Evan Rogister sig til at skrive et brev.
På det tidspunkt var han chefdirigent for USA’s vigtigste – og en af de eneste statsstøttede – kulturinstitutioner i USA: The Washington National Opera på The Kennedy Center. Evan Rogister og hans kolleger vidste, at Trump ønskede en ende på institutionen, som man kender den. Inden han blev valgt, havde han blandt andet udtalt, at kulturcentret var blevet for woke, og at forestillingerne var »frygtelige« (selv om han senere tilstod, at han aldrig har set en eneste).
»Jeg frygtede for centret, for mine kollegers fremtid og for ytringsfriheden,« siger Evan Rogister.
Noget af det første, Trump gjorde, da han blev indsat som præsident, var at udnævne sig selv som formand for The Kennedy Center, smide størstedelen af den ledende bestyrelse ud og gøre…
Music Is Freedom: Conductor Evan Rogister on Art, Power, and Living Through Trump and Putin
By Anna Ravn
(Originally published in Information, Denmark — translated and adapted)
When Donald Trump was elected President, Evan Rogister sat down at his desk in Washington and began to write a letter.
At the time, he was the principal conductor of the Washington National Opera, housed at the Kennedy Center — one of the few publicly funded cultural institutions in the United States. The mood was uneasy. Trump had already made it clear that he considered the Center “too woke,” that its performances were “terrible” — though, as he later admitted, he’d never actually seen one.
“I feared for the Center,” Rogister recalls now. “For my colleagues’ future — and for freedom of expression itself.”
One of Trump’s first acts in office was to appoint himself chairman of the Kennedy Center, dismiss most of the board, and install a new slate of loyalists, including J.D. Vance and his wife. A few months later, the Gay Men’s Chorus — one of the country’s oldest and most visible LGBTQ+ ensembles — had its annual Kennedy Center concert abruptly canceled. The official explanation cited “program changes.” Few believed it.