Ben Folds drew attention to the serious challenges facing the National Symphony Orchestra amid Donald Trump’s overhaul of the Kennedy Center in a new open letter shared on Instagram.
“Our National Symphony Orchestra is in real trouble — it may not survive. There’s currently no plan or solution in sight to save the organization,” Folds wrote. But, he insisted, “The public can turn the tide with overwhelming support.”
For Folds, the problems facing the NSO are personal. In 2017, the musician was named the orchestra’s first artistic adviser, and in the following years he spearheaded the “Declassified” concert series, which featured the NSO reimagining classical and contemporary music alongside various artists. He resigned from his post in early 2025 after Trump took charge of the Kennedy Center.
As Folds explained, the NSO currently has no programming scheduled for its upcoming season, in part because the orchestra “doesn’t even know if it has a home” thanks to Trump’s plans to close the Kennedy Center for renovations. While those plans were recently blocked by a judge (who also told Trump he had to remove his name from the Kennedy Center building), Folds stressed that it was “not the time for a victory lap because it’s going to be a long messy process to get this all back to a healthy situation.” (The Kennedy Center is likely to appeal the ruling.)
Additionally, Folds noted the NSO’s “tools for survival are entangled with the Kennedy Center’s legal and financial trouble. Tools such as the NSO’s endowment fund, which is tied to a bank note.” He added that the NSO has been “suffocated by the financial turmoil that has resulted from the presidential takeover.” (Both fundraising and ticket sales have plummeted since Trump’s takeover last year.)
To bolster the NSO, Folds called for more news coverage of the orchestra’s situation alongside more high-profile Kennedy Center stories (like the Trump name change). And he urged donors to keep in mind that the NSO “will need a lot of support to get back on its face.”
He further called on the public to voice their support for the NSO, whether through public comments or private letters. And he noted the importance of contacting congresspeople to demand new safeguards to protect the Kennedy Center and other federal arts institutions.
“We need enforced independence for our arts from politics, so that there can be trust again — trust that artists and audiences of all walks can exchange ideas and art in an apolitical environment,” Folds wrote. “Further, we need Congress and the Kennedy Center Board to create guidelines requiring any future director of the Kennedy Center to have actual experience in arts administration. We can now see what happens when an inept director who doesn’t know this business and spends time attacking people and artists who displease him or the President. Audiences and artists go elsewhere. So much for running the Kennedy Center like it was any other commercial venue.”
Near the end of his letter, Folds reflected on his decision to resign as the NSO’s artistic adviser, saying it “still hurts,” but he couldn’t risk “being used as a political pawn, implicitly siding with the POTUS’s politics by association.” At the same time, he noted that the members of the NSO were in a “different position.”
He continued: “There was nothing to gain from their resignation, except simple unemployment. They’ve remained apolitical. They’ve been performing their butts off in that awful situation.”
Folds ended by stating pointedly, “As the politicization of the Kennedy Center makes it very difficult to attract audiences and artists, our methods of support are more limited. But I say, let’s let them know we’re here and ready. Let’s get the word out, even amid the muddy waters of the legal dramas. Otherwise, imagine a free western country, with no National Symphony Orchestra. It’s real.”
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