As the flight attendant announced our arrival at Ronald Reagan Airport, a hush of dread moved through me with the runway’s first hard jolt. I knew I had come to the place where I was meant to be, in this city that once held me for twelve years. Homecomings are supposed to brighten the heart. This one did not.
Months earlier, I had learned that Ford’s Theatre would present me with the Lincoln Medal, an honor both dazzling and deeply humbling. I worked over my acceptance remarks with near-ritual devotion, revising them almost daily until the hour itself approached. Yet as the ceremony drew near, my mind kept straying to another civic landmark on the banks of the Potomac.
Nearly thirteen months had passed since the hostile takeover of the Kennedy Center began. I remember the day with painful exactness, and the anger it stirred in me has never fully receded. For all the spin, the evasions, and the courteous language draped over what followed, I could never comprehend why dismantling the Kennedy Center made any sense at all.
Few of those responsible seemed to understand that orchestras, theatres, and opera companies plan their seasons years in advance. When word came that the Fourth of July would mark the final day of events in the building, institutions were hurled into a frantic scramble to find other stages for their presentations. The artistic consequences were immense; the financial ones, scarcely less devastating.
Yes, shuttering the center in phases—darkening one wing while leaving another nominally open—would have stretched out the process, but at least the Center for the Performing Arts would still maintain some remnant of performing art. The opera company left. The principal presenting organization followed. Individual artists withdrew or were cancelled. Most of you reading this know how the story progressed.
In the sweep of the larger narrative, the human arithmetic was too easily blurred. What, really, would all of this cost? Who would be left to carry the burden? What would become of those whose livelihoods depended on the KC—the musicians, staff, librarians, ushers, and stagehands whose patient, often unseen labor had kept the place alive? These questions, and many more besides, weighed on me as we arrived on Thursday afternoon, May 28.
After an early dinner, I went out to walk near my hotel, set in the very center of the city, scarcely a block from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. I remembered my years with the orchestra, when one could wander the White House grounds, catch sight of an important visitor, or even wave to the president. It felt secure, certainly, and still welcoming. The People’s House seemed, in truth, to belong to the people. Now fencing encircles the entire perimeter to keep everyone at a distance of two football fields. At times, the residence vanishes behind a dense green veil through which nothing can be seen. From the street, only two narrow vantage points remain. And of course, whatever is taking place where the former East Wing once stood is hidden from public view. So much has changed in a matter of months.
Preparations are already underway for the Ultimate Fighting Championship event Donald Trump intended as a birthday gift to himself for his eightieth year. From Constitution Avenue, I could see the octagon rising into place. To walk the square around the White House is two miles, but that evening, it felt nearer to a thousand.
The next morning, I visited the concert hall at the Kennedy Center, where the National Symphony was holding its dress rehearsal for that evening’s performance. I wanted to speak to the musicians alongside whom I had once worked, as well as those who had joined their ranks since I left. But what could I say that they had not already heard?
First, I had to enter the building. I averted my eyes from its newly renamed exterior, but once inside, there was no escaping the official portraits of the president, scowling; the first lady, cold as ice; the vice president, wearing a Mona Lisa–like expression; and the second lady, offering a warm smile, at least. Conspicuously absent was any image of the man for whom the entire institution had originally been named.
Backstage and Onstage
After a genial moment of recognition with a guard who had held the same post during my years as music director, I made my way into the theatre. My first stop was the conductor’s dressing room, where conductor James Gaffigan was preparing to go onstage for rehearsal. When I asked how the week had gone, he said the orchestra was playing beautifully, though the uncertainty surrounding their future was plainly weighing on the musicians.
From there, I stepped onto the stage where I had conducted hundreds of times. The orchestra greeted me warmly, and most had not known I would be speaking to them. As I looked out at faces I had hired, alongside a new generation of younger players, I realized that I needed to begin with a simple sentence of history.
“For twelve seasons, it was my honor and privilege to lead this orchestra. We could always chart our own course. That has changed over the past thirteen months.”
This was the moment to remind ourselves why we became musicians in the first place. That evening, the orchestra would carry its audience away from the turmoil outside the center’s walls and beyond the unrest of the wider world. The same calling sustains the musicians themselves—as performers, teachers, or simply listeners.
To close, I praised Music Director Noseda for shaping the orchestra into something far beyond what I could have imagined during my own tenure. Their influence on the musical world was becoming ever more apparent. More than ever, they needed to preserve that standard—whatever the circumstances, wherever they performed. The music must not be allowed to die.
With a faint smile, I thanked them for letting me say a few words and handed the moment back to Jim Gaffigan. My parting line was simple: “Play some Ives for me.” Then, with my wife beside me, I sat in the empty auditorium. As Three Places in New England unfolded over the next twenty minutes, it felt as though the orchestra was pouring its heart out for the two of us alone. By the end, Cindy was in tears.
The rest of the morning passed in a kind of elegiac retracing, as I moved through the building with two NSO administrators who spoke candidly about the uncertainties ahead. Most of next season’s plans, they said, had found provisional shape—where rehearsals would take place, where concerts might be held—but the fate of the center itself remained suspended, unresolved. As we walked through the Hall of Nations and Hall of States, I could not escape the thought that I might be seeing this storied place for the last time.
Standing before the great bust of President Kennedy—three thousand pounds of bronze rising eight feet into the air—I felt again the force of what art can hold. The building is more than stone and steel; it is an embodiment of a vision, of a civic faith that beauty, freedom, and human expression belong together. To imagine that vision diminished, or hollowed out, is almost beyond bearing. A performing arts center must be alive with performance in all its forms. Severing freedom from the arts wounds both that freedom and the arts themselves.
I left carrying more feelings than I could easily identify, and once outside, I had to sit for a while, letting the hour settle over me. During that same span of time, a federal judge issued a ruling that not only halted any further deconstruction but also called for the Trump name to be taken down from the walls. Later that evening, the president said he was distancing himself from the center, although what that might mean remains as murky as ever. In the end, the matter will pass into the hands of Congress and the courts, and others will have to reckon with what this sudden turn may mean for the future of performances there.
Will the opera company return? Can the agreements with other venues be unwound without grave financial cost? What will be restored, what left undone, and at what price? These questions will take time to answer. Yet, for the first time in many months, a narrow beam of hope seemed to break through.
Closing Reflection
As my plane lifts off for home, what stays with me is the sound of “The Housatonic at Stockbridge” as it was played Friday morning. In its beauty, its spaciousness, and its unresolved ending, the piece seems to echo so much of what life feels like now.
In 1976, during the nation’s bicentennial, Leonard Bernstein and Alan Jay Lerner created the Broadway musical 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The show did not succeed, but its closing number from the first act captures, for me, the essence of what the Kennedy Center has long represented:
Take care of this house
Be always on call
Care for this house
It’s the hope of us all.