Wynton Marsalis: Jazz Legend Cancels Venezuela Concert Amid Rising Tensions with U.S.
Jazz legend Wynton Marsalis canceled his trip to Venezuela.
The multiple Grammy-winning trumpeter was scheduled to perform on Friday with the Venezuelan-based Simón Bolívar Orchestra.
The event was to be the first of three concerts planned in Caracas.
But recent tensions between the U.S. and the socialist country have changed all that.
Marsalis, along with other musicians culled from the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, was also set to lead a series of workshops with Venezuela’s world-famous El Sistema network of youth ensembles.
According to the Guardian, Greg Scholl, the executive director of the Jazz at Lincoln Center, expressed regret about the last minute cancellation of the Caracas event from the jazz orchestra’s 12-city South American tour.
Scholl said the visit would be rescheduled at a later date in order to avoid becoming a distraction in the midst of recent political turmoil between the U.S. and Venezuela.
“[Jazz] is a powerful tool to bring people across cultures and geographies together,” Scholl said.
“But it’s important that it’s performed in conditions when the music can be heard.
“Intentionally or otherwise, if our performances there and the work that we were doing with them there was to become politicised those conditions no longer exist. And that could be harmful to both of our institutions.”
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro ordered last week the U.S. to greatly scale down the size of its embassy, while putting a new visa requirement on Americans.
The president said he was taking the necessary measures to protect his oil-rich country from attempts by the U.S. to oust his government.
The U.S., calling Maduro’s claims laughable, described Venezuela’s recent strictures as attempts to distract attention from the country’s economic crisis.
Scholl emphasized all of the musicians that had planned to perform had their visas and that there was no pressure from either the U.S. or Venezuela for the orchestra to either keep or cancel its intended performance.
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