Musicians are disappearing from Australia’s biggest stage shows as technology usurps their roles.
The world’s highest grossing musical returned to Sydney in April with a smaller orchestra after Disney cut all four string parts from the 2026 season of The Lion King.
The string section has been replaced by KeyComp, a program developed in Germany which allows a single keyboard player to replicate entire sections of an orchestra by using a synthesiser.
This has left live musicians out of a job, their musicality and expressiveness supplanted by recordings from Hamburg.
“The Lion King is the highest grossing musical of all time, and despite that, they’re still deciding to cut jobs,” the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance’s federal musicians president James Steendam told a NSW parliamentary inquiry into live music on Monday.
“Musicians are earning around 25 per cent less now – adjusted for inflation – than when Disney first brought Lion King here in 2003, so we are not the reason for any expenses that are blowing out.
“(But) I now find myself largely unemployed, in some part due to Disney’s decision.”
Mr Steendam has played the violin and viola for Opera Australia, Orchestra Victoria, and most recently performed almost 1000 shows with the Australian production of Hamilton.
The music team that put on Hamilton is the same one doing The Lion King and it is likely Mr Steendam would have been working on this production if the string parts had not been cut, he said.
KeyComp is increasingly encroaching on the world’s most watched musicals, with Disney also deploying the technology for Beauty and the Beast and Frozen, and could spread to other live music sectors including opera and ballet.
“As musicians start to disappear from our orchestra pits and music theatres … there will be downstream implications,” Mr Steendam said.
“The music industry is an ecosystem, it doesn’t exist in a bubble.
“One thing will always affect another and economies that rely on live music will also be affected: there’s no music industry without musicians.”
But many productions that use live musicians, including The Lion King, travel to Australia with funding from the state governments.
The demise of live music has also extended to dance, with the West Australian Ballet’s recent production of Dracula in Adelaide using a recording by the WA Symphony Orchestra, instead of hiring musicians to play live.
The MEAA has urged the NSW government to introduce rules establishing minimum orchestra requirements for performances that receive funding or tax incentives from states or state-based agencies.
AAP has contacted Disney for comment.
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