A pianist whose performance was cancelled by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra after he dedicated a new piece of music to journalists killed in Gaza says he was surprised by the response, as such introductions are “normal” practice.

Yeah that’s how I understood them as well. For example, I was at a performance by The Choir of King’s College Cambridge recently where they performed a piece about the massacre, displacement and forced assimilation of Indigenous Australians that had been specifically written for their Australian tour and the choir’s director Daniel Hyde introduced the piece beforehand. He wasn’t as explicit with his introduction, but the fact that he talked about it beforehand was very normal behaviour as far as I’m concerned. I have seen many conductors and soloists do this over the years for pieces that have been specifically written for them or by a local composer for a tour, as was the case with the piece performed by Gillham. So for the MSO to claim that the introduction was made without their authority is pretty strange to me. Have they really been reviewing every single speech prior to this? Do they really have a “no politics” policy that the soloist breached? These speeches often seem impromptu and unscripted so I doubt it. It sounds to me like the MSO is the one playing politics here.