Musicians vanishing from Australia’s major productions
Musicians are disappearing from Australia’s biggest stage shows as technology usurps their roles.
The world’s highest-grossing musical returned to Sydney with a smaller orchestra in April after Disney cut all four string sections from the 2026 season of The Lion King.
The string section was replaced by KeyComp, a program developed in Germany that allowed a single keyboardist to reproduce entire parts of an orchestra using a synthesizer.
This put live musicians out of work; Their musicality and expressiveness were replaced by recordings from Hamburg.
“The Lion King is the highest-grossing musical of all time and yet they still decide to cut things,” James Steendam, federal musicians chair of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, told a NSW parliamentary inquiry into live music on Monday.
“Musicians earn about 25 percent less, adjusted for inflation, than they did when Disney first brought the Lion King here in 2003, so we’re not the reason spending is booming.
“(But) I find myself largely unemployed, in part due to Disney’s decision.”
Mr Steendam has played violin and viola with Opera Australia and Orchestra Victoria, and has performed almost 1000 performances, most recently with the Australian production of Hamilton.
The musical team that staged Hamilton is the same team that produced The Lion King, and he said Mr. Steendam would probably be working on that production if the strings had not been cut.
KeyComp is increasingly encroaching on the world’s most-watched musicals; Disney is also using the technology for Beauty and the Beast and Frozen, and could expand into other live music industries such as opera and ballet.
“As musicians begin to disappear from our orchestra pits and music halls, there will be negative impacts,” Mr. Steendam said.
“The music industry is an ecosystem, it doesn’t exist in a bubble.
“One thing will always influence another, and economies based on live music will also be affected: without musicians, there is no music industry.”
However, many productions using live musicians, including The Lion King, go to Australia with funding from state governments.
The death of live music has also spread to dance, with the Western Australian Ballet’s latest production of Dracula in Adelaide using a recording by the WA Symphony Orchestra rather than hiring musicians to perform it live.
MEAA has called on the NSW government to introduce rules setting minimum orchestra requirements for performances that receive funding or tax incentives from states or state-based bodies.
AAP has contacted Disney for comment.
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