Leonard Bernstein’s children want his music used to ‘rebuke’ Trump

The children of composer Leonard Bernstein — Nina Bernstein Simmons, Alexander Bernstein and Jamie Bernstein — made a case for their father’s music being performed at the Kennedy Center despite controversy over President Donald Trump’s takeover of the music and arts venue. 

“Since President Trump has asserted control over the center, making himself chairman and purging its board and administration in favor of his loyalists, a number of artists (though certainly not all) have severed ties with the institution in protest,” Bernstein’s surviving children wrote in a guest essay for The New York Times. “Many friends and associates have urged us, the rights holders of our father’s music, to withdraw his works from a gala program on Saturday.”

Trump in January fired the theater’s board of directors and announced he had been elected board chair by his new handpicked board. Following the president’s announcement, some groups who oppose the Trump administration have decided to cancel shows at the center. 

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Responding to the controversy, the Bernstein children argued that their father would want his music to be played at the Kennedy Center.

“We asked ourselves: What would our dad do?” the Bernstein children wrote. “In our hearts, we already knew the answer. He would let his music be heard. But we believe that we can make our own strong statement, in honor of our father, by letting people hear his music in that space, as an audible rebuke to Mr. Trump’s ugly policies. We plan to donate whatever proceeds we receive from upcoming Kennedy Center performances to the American Civil Liberties Union.”

They continued: “These days, battered and stung as so many of us feel by President Trump’s relentless assaults on civil rights and the Constitution itself, we can find comfort in our father’s music. His notes invoke the courage to be ourselves, to express ourselves — and to be what Americans have always aspired to be: free.”

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The Bernstein children wrote that one of the most significant ways they can oppose Trump is by “letting people hear his music in that space, as an audible rebuke to Mr. Trump’s ugly policies.”

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Fox News’ Brie Stimson and Brooke Singman contributed to this report.