Pianist Jayson Gillham.Credit:Internet
Jayson Gillham had been due to perform with the MSO at a concert in Melbourne on Thursday,but the orchestra confirmed on Tuesday that it had removed him from the program following remarks he made on stage during a performance on Sunday. The orchestra will now perform Beethoven’s Symphony No.8,in place of the scheduled Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.12.
Gillham was giving a recital at MSO’s Iwaki Auditorium on Sunday,where he played a five-minute piece for piano by Australian composer Connor D’Netto calledWitness. D’Netto’swebsite says the piece is “dedicated to the journalists of Gaza”.
Gillham says he had spent some time thinking about how to introduce all the pieces of the concert. “I knew that it was a Sunday morning and that there were going to be young people there as well – for instance my niece and nephew were there – and I wanted to make sure I got the tone right.”
He said he was “surprised at the strength of the reaction” by the MSO to his words. “I wasn’t made aware of anything that I wasn’t allowed to say or do,and it was normal to introduce the works,” he said.
Gillham shared with this masthead the introduction he gave on Sunday. “Over the last 10 months,Israel has killed more than 100 Palestinian journalists. A number of these have been targeted assassinations of prominent journalists as they were travelling in marked press vehicles or wearing their press jackets.
“The killing of journalists is a war crime in international law,and it is done in an effort to prevent the documentation and broadcasting of war crimes to the world. In addition to the role of journalists who bear witness,the word witness in Arabic is shahid,which derives from the same root word as shaheed,meaning martyr.”
Gillham is a British-Australian pianist whom theMSO describes as “one of the finest pianists of his generation”.
After Sunday’s recital,the MSO sent a letter to attendees saying:“Witness was accepted for performance at the request of Mr Gillham on the basis that it was a short meditative piece. Mr Gillham made his personal remarks without seeking the MSO’s approval or sanction. They were an intrusion of personal political views on what should have been a morning focused on a program of works for solo piano.”