One story that has been unfolding over the past three weeks, and getting steadily more bizarre, is the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s stoush with piano virtuoso, Jayson Gilham. To recap briefly, on 11 August, as part of an MSO solo recital, the pianist played a piece called Witness, written by his friend, Connor D’Netto, in honour of Palestinian journalists killed in the Gaza conflict. The piece was in the program, so there should have been no suprises. Indeed, as John Roskam recently pointed out in the Australian Financial Review, the MSO has form over the past few years, supporting the ‘Yes’ vote in the Voice referendum, staging pieces of music that deal with environmental issues, asylum seekers, and the ”resistance war” fought by Aboriginal people, 1840-63. For years, the organisation has embraced progressive political causes, with no apparent damage to its audience base.
And then came Jayson Gilham.
Before playing D’Netto’s five-minute composition, he treated the audience to a speech in which he denounced the “targeted assassinations” of journalists committed by the Israeli Defence Forces. Apparently, the speech went on longer than the piece of music, offending Jewish members of the audience.
Naturally, complaints began flooding in from audience members and subscribers who did not share Gilham’s views. Managing director, Sophie Galaise, with the full support of her six-member management team, decided to cancel a follow-up concert. Almost instantly, a new wave of complaints followed, protesting the cancellation, along with a vote of no confidence from orchestra members. Soon the 11-member Board of the MSO had decided Galaise had to go, abruptly ending her eight-year tenure.
Apologies were issued to Gilham, who was told his concert would be restored to the program. The only problem was that Gilham decided he would not be playing and took legal action instead. I won’t go into all the convoluted details, including an “independent review” to be chaired by Peter Garrett (of all people!), but at last glance, according to the Guardian, the pianist was demanding: “a public apology from the MSO, an affirmation of artists’ rights to speak freely, compensation for reputational damage caused by the initial cancelling of a concert, and guaranteed future engagements to repair the artist’s professional standing.”
He also wanted the MSO to “commission a new piano concerto by a Palestinian composer and make a donation to the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music in Palestine.”
The MSO Board seems to have regretted their previous cave-in, and are refusing to accept any of these demands – which begs the question: “Why did they make this rod for their own backs?”
Surely the issue in question is not “freedom of speech”, as Gilham claims, but whether the speech was appropriate to the occasion. There is no need to dispute the pianist’s claims about journalists’ deaths or Israeli war crimes. Even if these provocative statements were proved correct, it wouldn’t make it acceptable for him to stand up and lecture an audience that had come along to hear him play the piano. It was an incredible imposition, especially when the MSO – for once – had been clear about not taking a stance vis-à-vis the war in Gaza.
Having effectively won the day by forcing the departure of the managing director, receiving an apology from the board and an invitation to continue with his concert schedule, Gilham’s subsequent behaviour paints an incredible picture of arrogance and sanctimony. Not only is he demanding to be financially compensated for self-inflicted “reputational damage”, he feels the door should opened for all performers to make lengthy political speeches before they take up ther instruments. One wonders if he’d be so open-minded if the next pianist gave a speech denouncing Palestinians and praising the IDF. This is not “freedom of speech”, it’s extortion.
Meanwhile, Sophie Galaise says she has received more than 400 messages of support, which is some compensation for the barrage of insults and personal abuse she copped from Gilham’s friends and supporters. Given the way this affair has developed, it’s hard not to see her as the wronged party. As she’s considering her “legal options”, the subsequent behaviour of the pianist and the MSO Board should lend enormous weight to her claim that she was only trying to do the right thing.
The MSO Board has learned the same lesson that MoNA learned with the Santiago Sierra backdown of 2021 – that when you attempt a backflip with triple pike and twist, you’re in danger of serious injury. Start apologising for actions that are broadly defensible, and your antagonists – with high moral indignation on their side – will stage a takeover action. Soon a small skirmish has blown up into a culture war that threatens to drag on for months, leaving a permanent scar on the organisation.
Had Jayson Gilham been the greatest pianist of all time, by turning his performance into a political platform he crossed a line. It seems to me that Galaise and her team were right to pull the plug, and the Board acted in the most cowardly, pathetic manner in not supporting this call. Whatever sympathy the pianist may have gathered, it has been dissipated by his subsequent, high-handed actions. The Board of the MSO should be looking at themselves next time they want to assign blame. Do we really need Peter Garrett to figure this out?
On a more general note, music and art often have a powerful political dimension, but everything is lost if the artist presents a long explanation – and verbal justification – for the work. I don’t recall that Beethoven made a speech about the promise and failure of Napoleon when the Eroica symphony was first performed. Neither did Picasso give us a lecture on Guernica. A work shoud stand or fail on its formal, expressive merits. Had Gilham simply introduced Witness as a piece written in honour of journalists killed in the Gaza conflict, he would have gotten his message across without antagonising his listeners. The longer the verbal diatribe, the more painfully it detracts from the work itself. If he thinks there should be more of this, he has a very jaundiced understanding of art. And so does the MSO Board.
Another organisation with a strange understanding of art is the Sydney Morning Herald, which decided not to run my column on the Sydney Contemporary art fair. Although this is arguably the most important event on the calendar for the Australian art market, the SMH felt it could be covered in a mid-week news item of less than 500 words, so carelessly written and subbed that it made four painters, including Imants Tillers and Shirley Purdie, into photographers.
What can I say? The rejected column may be read on my own site.
Only one option for this week’s movie review: Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Tim Burton’s sequel to his cult horror-comedy of 1988. If 36 years is a long time to wait for a follow-up, it only seems to have whetted the tastes of fans who weren’t even born when the original Beetlejuice appeared. It will, however, be a grievous disappointment for those who prefer their cultural experiences to be garnished with a long political dissertation.