Musical theatre job losses: Why musicians are being replaced by KeyComp technology as production costs rise
Publish Date: 2026-06-25 21:30:00
Source Domain: www.smh.com.au
June 26, 2026 — 11:30am
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Australian orchestra musicians have been cut from the country’s highest-grossing musical, Disney’s The Lion King, and replaced by technology as theatre productions across the country buckle under the pressure of rising costs.
Musical productions are rapidly turning to cost-cutting technologies such as KeyComp to replace live musicians. The abrupt cancellation of the national tour of Eddie Perfect’s Beetlejuice the Musical is just the latest example of how cost-of-living pressures are hitting the sector.
Violinist James Steendam, federal president of the musicians’ arm of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, believes he would be playing in The Lion King if six musicians hadn’t been cut from the pit since the show’s last tour in 2013, when there were 17.
Of those cut, four were string players, and two were trombonists. Those sounds are now produced by KeyComp, a technology used mostly in musical theatre, which requires a single keyboard player to replicate the size and dynamics of a full live orchestra using prerecorded sounds.
“It’s definitely conceivable that … I would have been working on that musical,” Steendam said.
“[Instead] our jobs are being replaced by musicians in Germany … The irony is that where it’s recorded in Hamburg, Germany, they’re not allowed to use this technology in their own local scenes.” Its use is also banned on Broadway.
Jeremy Rose, a music industry lecturer at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, said session musicians – who often play in the pit, or as advertising composers – are frequently the first casualties of companies implementing new technologies.
“It’s been very unnerving for musicians who are getting displaced by certain…
