As the center goes through changes after President Trump’s takeover, Gianandrea Noseda is extending his tenure at the National Symphony Orchestra, one of the center’s main groups.
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington has gone through big changes since President Trump’s recent takeover of the institution.
But there will be at least one constant in the coming years: The conductor Gianandrea Noseda will stay on as music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, one of the center’s flagship groups. Mr. Noseda has extended his contract through at least 2031, the ensemble announced on Wednesday.
Mr. Noseda, 60, the ensemble’s maestro since 2017, said that he felt he still had more to accomplish with the orchestra. He wants the ensemble to tour more often, to commission more pieces and to perform more opera.
“We have established this kind of mutual trust in our relationship,” Mr. Noseda, whose contract had been set to expire in 2027, said in an interview this week. “It would have been a pity to stop.”
Mr. Trump took over the Kennedy Center last month, purging its board of all Biden appointees and installing himself as chairman. Deborah F. Rutter, the center’s president for more than a decade, was fired. She was credited with luring the highly esteemed Mr. Noseda to the orchestra in what was widely seen as a coup.
After the president’s takeover, Ben Folds, the singer and songwriter, resigned his post as an adviser to the orchestra. The orchestra has stayed largely quiet about the changes; its musicians issued a statement saying they were “proud to perform for our patrons, our community in our nation’s capital, and the country at large.”