BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — American
jazz legend Wynton Marsalis has canceled concerts in Venezuela at a
time of rising tensions between the two nations.
The New York-based trumpeter and composer was
scheduled to perform his "Swing Symphony" on Friday alongside the Simon
Bolivar Orchestra conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, the first of three
concerts planned in Caracas. Marsalis and other musicians from the
Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra also were supposed to lead a series of
workshops with Venezuela's world-famous El Sistema network of youth
ensembles. Both that organization and the orchestra are supported by
Venezuela's socialist government. Greg
Scholl, executive director of the Jazz at Lincoln Center, said he
regretted the last-minute scratch of Caracas from the jazz orchestra's
12-city South American tour. He said the visit would be rescheduled at a
later date to avoid becoming a distraction amid the recent political
turmoil. Jazz "is a powerful tool to bring people across cultures
and geographies together," he said in an interview from New York. "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 politicized those
conditions no longer exist. And that could be harmful to both of our
institutions." Marsalis has long been an emissary for jazz and in
2010 spent a week in Havana jamming with music students in
communist-ruled Cuba. His first visit to Venezuela since 2005 couldn't have come at a worse time for relations between the two countries. Last
week, President Nicolas Maduro ordered the U.S. to sharply reduce the
size of its embassy and slapped a new visa requirement on Americans that
has caught many travelers by surprise. The
embattled leader said he was taking the steps to protect the oil-rich
nation from attempts by the U.S. to oust his government. The U.S. has
dismissed the claims as laughable and called them an attempt to distract
attention from Venezuela's deepening economic crisis. Scholl
said all the musicians had visas and that neither the U.S. nor
Venezuela's government pressured the orchestra to either keep or cancel
its appearance.
Associated Press writer Joshua Goodman reported this story in Bogota and Charles J. Gans reported from New York.
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