In short: The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra admits it made an error when it pulled pianist Jayson Gillham from an upcoming performance over comments he made about the killing of journalists in Gaza.
The MSO said it made an “error” in cancelling his performance, but maintains their concert was not an appropriate place to express personal views.
What’s next? The orchestra’s August 15 concert, which was expected to go ahead without Mr Gillham, has now been cancelled due to security issues but the MSO wants to reschedule the performance.
I think we agree here in the sense that MSO are within their rights to dismiss him. But I think that the public backlash is very predictable outcome, and the public are right to feel outraged at the MSO for this. I can understand they’re in a tough position but cancelling the soloist’s performance was really the nuclear option. The cancellation is a much bigger political statement than the soloists comments (which were ultimately about the composition anyway), and if that’s the statement the MSO wants to make they’re free to do so but they need to accept they’re being perceived as not only silencing their own artists, but also defending war crimes (whether that was their intention or not). Just terrible management of the situation.
The artists comments were an allegation of a war crime.
Obviously it could’ve been handled better but old mate should’ve known better.
“Allegation” is far too weak a word for the amount of evidence at hand here. He mentioned the barely-disputed facts of war crimes. Facts that are built in to the piece the MSO scheduled.
Was the MSO “within their rights” to cancel him if they wanted? Of course, yes, legally. And we are within our rights to tell them that it was an extremely regressive and shitty thing to do, and that cancelling him is ethically they did completely the wrong thing. And they’ve continued to do the wrong thing in this complete non-apology.
I’m not disputing what has happened in Palestine, but I maintain that it’s daft to make this type of incendiary comment from someone else’s platform.
When you’re acting as part of a group your views and opinions reflect on said group, and as such its a basic courtesy to discuss anything controversial with said group in advance.
This applies to anyone with any sort of job or affiliation what so ever.
It’s a basic expectation that if you’re performing a piece, especially at its world premier you’re going to talk a bit about the piece. That’s literally what he did. He didn’t bring up personal politics out of nowhere.
There is no justification for even the mildest of criticism against him, except for being a supporter of Israel’s genocide. They’re already removed the possibility of claiming not to be political thanks to their prior (and recent) actions.
“Agree with me or you support genocide”.