Melbourne Symphony Orchestra says it made 'error' in cancelling pianist's performance after Gaza comments
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra says it made 'error' in cancelling pianist's performance after Gaza comments
A concert featuring Australian-British pianist Jayson Gillham is set to be rescheduled after the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra says it made an "error" in cancelling his performance following comments he made about the killing of journalists in Gaza.
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.
Odd, I can't see them actually admitting what the error they made was. Sounds like a very hollow apology. Is the error that you got caught or is the error you realise you did a bad thing?
"MEAA members stand in solidarity with Jayson Gillham and with journalists working in Palestine."
At least unions continue to do the right thing.
Obviously, cancelling him was an error of judgement.
Upon reflection, or encouragement from the union, they've realised and corrected their error.
That said, regardless of how you feel about journalists in Palestine, the MSO's event is not a platform from which to espouse political views.
Eh, they played the ukranian national anthem before concerts in 2022. I could see where you're coming from if the soloist actually said something controversial but his statement was literally along the lines of "war crimes are bad" - cancelling his performance for that is a much more inflammatory political statement (hence the huge backlash) than what he said in the first place imo.
the MSO’s event is not a platform from which to espouse political views
What absolute nonsense. He was playing a piece of music literally dedicated to journalists murdered by Israel. The piece was on the programme at that concert, it's not like he surprised them with it in an encore. (I know the public isn't usually made aware of what piece might be played for an encore. I dunno if the host orchestra normally would be. Not that that's relevant here anyway.)
If you don't want politics, don't get involved in the arts. Expecting no comment to be made about Israel's war crimes is like expecting a Shostakovich concert to never mention the Nazis & WWII or Stalin and his artistic crackdowns. Or to perform Beethoven's Eroica and make no mention of Napoleon.
All art is political. Some more explicitly so than others. And they scheduled a piece that was extremely political, and then got outraged at the politics of the piece being mentioned. It's absurd.
Translation: “Please remove us from the BDS list”
I wonder what the security issues are.
Concert security is getting really stringent atm. With the government raising the terrorism threat to probable, large events are increasing security measures. Given how much publicity this has gotten, how controversial it is, plus how intensely passionate people are about the palestine/israel conflict, I can see why they wouldn't want to go ahead with this. Someone was stabbed at a world music concert at the Perth concert hall last sunday too!