Overview
- The discrimination trial, which opened Monday in Melbourne, is slated to run about three weeks with the orchestra planning roughly 20 witnesses.
- The suit stems from a 2024 MSO event where Jayson Gillham dedicated a solo piece to journalists killed in Gaza and said Israel targeted reporters, after which the MSO canceled his next concert citing safety concerns.
- Gillham testified that he withheld his plan to speak because he feared the MSO would stop him, while the orchestra says it was misled and must control what is said on its stage.
- On Tuesday, evidence included MSO notes that Gillham’s own agent called his onstage remarks selfish and a “middle finger” to people who supported his career, as an MSO executive described being surprised and furious.
- The court heard the MSO logged one written and two verbal complaints about the remarks, then 487 complaints about the cancellation, and the judge urged both sides to keep Middle East rhetoric out of the legal issues.