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The tumult continues at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as the National Symphony Orchestra’s executive director, Jean Davidson, steps down from her role to become executive director and chief executive of the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. Davidson will assume her new position May 4, the Wallis announced Friday.

Davidson is not new to L.A., having served as the president and CEO of the Los Angeles Master Chorale at the Music Center from 2015 to 2023. She left the Master Chorale for the NSO in Washington, D.C., where she worked for two years until President Trump began his controversial takeover of the Kennedy Center, firing its board and installing himself as chairman. Major artist defections ensued, culminating with a board vote to rename the center the Trump Kennedy Center in December and February’s surprise announcement that the center would close for two years for renovations, beginning July 4.

“I’ve learned a lot in the last three years, and I think it’s no secret that it’s been a hard year,” Davidson told The Times, adding that the politicization of the Kennedy Center was a factor in her decision-making. “I had intended to stay through the [orchestra’s] 100th anniversary in 2031, but found it more and more difficult to achieve the goals that we had set out to achieve given the external forces that are at work that are just so far beyond my control.”

It seemed like “I had reached a natural ending point,” she said.

With the imminent closure of the Kennedy Center, speculation has swirled around the NSO’s future, especially in light of the Washington National Opera’s decision in January to cut ties with the storied venue, which has been its home since 1971. The Kennedy Center’s Trump-appointed leadership, however, made it clear that it intended to support the NSO in the long term, and the orchestra’s board chair assured musicians that the orchestra and its staff would remain intact.

Davidson said the NSO is in the process of identifying venues for the next two years, and that the orchestra has been told by the Kennedy Center that its financial support is not in question.

“Many venue operators in the D.C. area have been very generously reaching out to us, asking how they can help,” she said. “Of course, we plan our seasons years in advance, and so next season was already planned. We already have conductors and soloists and all of that, and so it’s a bit of a jigsaw puzzle aligning our existing programming and obligations to those artists with venues that are appropriate for those programs.”

It will take several more weeks to come up with a cohesive plan and it will probably include several venues, “but we will have a season,” Davidson said. “And we hope that everybody will come.”

In many ways, Davidson said, the NSO is stronger than it has been in quite some time. During her tenure, Davidson helped reboot the orchestra’s international and domestic touring, which includes upcoming shows at New York’s Carnegie Hall in May and at the Hollywood Bowl in August. The orchestra also extended acclaimed music director Gianandrea Noseda’s contract through 2031.

“The orchestra is just playing at such a high level and they really have never sounded so good,” said Davidson, echoing what notable critics have also been saying. “We’re still welcoming many new players after our audition process, and I think that’s all very positive for the NSO.”

Davidson knows that leaving her role will be difficult for the orchestra, but she believes it will emerge stronger.

“I care deeply about the NSO and I am so proud of everything that we’ve accomplished together. I think the world of Gianandrea, of [principal conductor] Steven Reineke, our musicians, our staff and board — it’s a great community of people,” said Davidson.

Davidson also believes that the upcoming renovations to the Kennedy Center will ultimately result in a better experience for audiences and artists. She just wishes there had been much more advance notice.

“Usually orchestras will plan for being out of their hall years in advance, and we only have months to do that, so it is causing a bit of strain,” she said. “I think the most important thing is that our audiences and donors continue to support the NSO during this transition period.”

Davidson will now embark on her own transition as she moves from D.C. to L.A., rejoining her husband who has stayed in the area as a music professor at UC Irvine.

“This is an opportunity that’s been on my bucket list of things that I want to do in my life and it seems like the right time,” said Davidson of her new role at the Wallis in Beverly Hills.

Compared with the NSO, the Wallis is practically brand new, having opened in 2013.

Davidson is excited that there is lots of room for growth, and that the Wallis has evolved into one of the region’s most exciting multidisciplinary performing arts presenters and home base to a variety of local arts groups.

“I think anytime you’re starting a new role, there’s a lot of learning that needs to occur,” Davidson said. “And I’m not somebody that is prone to walking in with a big vision that’s going to suddenly change course. I think they’ve been doing a lot of great work and so I’m looking forward to collaborating with the team that’s there — to learn and to create a shared vision for the future.”

It’s an exciting time to be in Los Angeles, Davidson said.

“The last decade or so has seen a lot of growth in the art sector, and there are so many talented artists and organizations in L.A. that need a place to perform.”

MILAN — Italian police fired tear gas and a water cannon at dozens of protesters who threw firecrackers and tried to access a highway near a Winter Olympics venue Saturday.

The brief confrontation came at the end of a peaceful march by thousands highlighting the environmental impact of the Games and the presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Italy.

Police held off the demonstrators, who appeared to be trying to reach the Santagiulia Olympic ice hockey rink. By then, the larger peaceful protest, including students and families with small children, had dispersed.

Earlier, a group of masked protesters had set off smoke bombs and firecrackers on a bridge overlooking a construction site about half a mile from the Olympic Village that’s housing about 1,500 athletes.

Police vans behind a temporary metal fence secured the road to the athletes’ village, but the protest veered away, continuing on a trajectory toward the Santagiulia venue. A heavy police presence guarded the entire route.

There was no indication that the protest and resulting road closure interfered with athletes’ transfers to their events, all on the outskirts of Milan.

The demonstration coincided with U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s visit to Milan as head of the American delegation that attended the opening ceremony Friday, during which Vance was booed.

He and his family visited Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” closer to the city center, far from the protest that denounced the deployment of ICE agents to provide security for the U.S. delegation. ICE has drawn international condemnation for its role in the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown in U.S. cities, including the fatal shooting of two people in Minneapolis last month by ICE and U.S. Border Patrol agents.

U.S. Homeland Security Investigations, an ICE unit that focuses on cross-border crimes, frequently sends its officers to overseas events like the Olympics to assist with security. The ICE arm at the forefront of the immigration crackdown in the U.S. is known as Enforcement and Removal Operations, and there is no indication its officers are being sent to Italy.

At the larger, peaceful demonstration, which police said numbered 10,000, people carried cardboard cutouts to represent trees felled to build the new bobsled run in Cortina d’Ampezzo. A group of dancers performed to beating drums. Music blasted from a truck leading the march, one a profanity-laced anti-ICE anthem.

“Let’s take back the cities and free the mountains,” read a banner by a group calling itself the Unsustainable Olympic Committee. Another group called the Assn. of Proletariat Excursionists organized the cutout trees.

“They bypassed the laws that usually are needed for major infrastructure projects, citing urgency for the Games,” said protester Guido Maffioli, who expressed concern that the private entity organizing the Games would eventually pass on debt to Italian taxpayers.

Homemade signs read “Get out of the Games: Genocide States, Fascist Police and Polluting Sponsors,” the final one a reference to fossil fuel companies that are sponsors of the Games. One woman carried an artificial tree on her back decorated with the sign: “Infernal Olympics.”

The demonstration followed another recently at which hundreds protested the deployment of ICE agents.

Like that protest, demonstrators Saturday said they were opposed to ICE agents’ presence, despite official statements that a small number of agents from an investigative arm would be present in U.S. diplomatic territory, and not operational on the streets.

Barry and Rosa write for the Associated Press.