Introduction
In this portfolio, I’m going to be discussing the aspects of the job role of a Guitarist working in the West End Theatres, this often sought-after job can be difficult to acquire and very different to a lot of work most musicians do. Through research I’m going to explore what is needed to hold up in this role and what work looks like for musicians working in West End pits, along with legal and financial issues in the role and industry.
Professional/Academic Qualifications / Skills
While there aren’t any specific qualifications needed to work in musical theatre, there are certainly expectations regarding key abilities needed for the job. A big focus would appear to be on experience and most musicians working in the West End start off with part-time or a lower position job like a deputy musician (Musicians Union, (2024)) before moving onto permanent chair roles. However typically some experience is even required for Dep roles and one way in which musicians can gain an understanding of how a pit band functions and a musician’s role in the band is through sitting in the pit with a chair-holder, allowing them to ask questions and potentially putting their name forward for a future deputy role, (Musicians Union (2025))
Academically, there are even less obvious requirements for positions within a pit band, it’s not explicitly mentioned by any theatre companies if any qualification is needed / preferred. When I spoke to the chair-holder guitarist for The Book of Mormon (a highly successful West End Musical), he briefly mentioned that he noticed most guitarists in his branch of work had studied jazz degrees before going onto Theatre work, (Tommy Emmerton (2025)). This may be because the increased focus on reading standard notation in Jazz degrees compared to some popular music degrees, It could be also argued that the increased improvisation aspect of Jazz degrees aids in the adaptability of a musician. However it should be noted, not very much of the music performed for musicals nowadays is Jazz-based.
Because of the lack of auditions and specific requirements for this jobs, it can be said that to one of the most important skills to succeed in this industry is to be able to form valuable connections to people working in and around the Musical Theatres.
To go into more specifics regarding musical abilities, especially as a guitarist, lets take a look at some skills needed to enter this line of work. One of the main skills that is needed in pit band work as a guitarist, is the ability to proficiently read Staff Notation.
Guitarists “are notoriously poor readers compared to other instrumentalists” (Noad F.M (1994)) and this is especially the case for Electric guitarists playing popular music. Part of the difficulty comes from the complexity of the fretboard, firstly the guitar has roughly a 4 Octave range (E2-E6 on a 24 fret guitar) and the average note has 2.8 different locations on the fretboard and 9.2 different fingering possibilities! (Harrison E. (2010)). This makes sight reading significantly harder as it’s far easier to be caught out by fingering challenges when reading Staff notation as opposed to Tablature.
I’ve written a simple treble-clef melody in Figure 1, which most musicians would say looks fairly easy to play. Now in Figure 2, I’ve converted the staff notation in Figure 1 to tablature to demonstrate the fingering for this melody. As you can see there are at least 7 ‘Logical’ fingerings for this melody. This example alone wouldn’t necessarily have a most efficient fingering, however if it were to be sightread in a full piece of music, then it would be far more difficult to choose the efficient fingering and not end up stuck in the wrong fingering / area of the fretboard. Of course the Guitar players in the West End show that proficient reading is not impossible on the guitar, but this demonstrates how much more of a challenge it can be for electric guitar players and why many struggle to master this specific skill.
On top of this, the ability to play a wide number of genres is needed for any work like this, you could be asked to dep on any kind of show with any kind of music. Many modern musicals feature many styles of music so adaptability is key. Along with this, many shows requires doubling on multiple guitars (e.g. Electric, Acoustic, Nylon etc.) so guitarists need to be prepared to use these and work on their sound for each.
The Nature of The Job
In the Musicians Union (2025) The Society of London Theatre (‘West End’ of London) Agreement, it typically refers to a 8 performance-a-week contract, where musicians are typically contracted to play 6 afternoon performances (most of these will start around 7:30pm (London Theatre (2022)) with two daytime performances known as ‘matinées’ – typically one of these will be on Sunday and the other mid-week.
The nature of working in the west end is different to a lot of work musicians take on, being more regular and employed compared to a lot of freelance work musicians typically do. Performers on the west end receive benefits of being employed when in a permanent chair, this includes rights agreed by the Musicians Union and the Society of London Theatre.
Musicians working in theatres in the West End receive a base maximum of 28 days of holiday with pay per year, and potentially more depending on the musician’s service time on the show. Among many other rights including caps on weekly rehearsal hours and overtime rates
There are also agreed pay rates among West End Theatres and the Musicians Union,
(Musicians Union (2025))
Minimum pay rates for musicians are based primarily on a once or twice nightly basis with a roughly 15% multiplier for doubling, trebling or quadrupling. As well as other additional payments made such as Porterage (a payment made at the start and end of a run of a performance for instrumental transport)
It’s easy to see lots of benefits to these rights and agreements between the SOLT and the MU. And benefits to being contractually employed as a musician.
Shockingly, only 35% of Musicians pay into the pension scheme (Musicians Union (2012)) and contracted work like this with strong and fair agreements for working musicians are incredibly beneficial to performers.
To take a look on the contrary, some musicians may dread this regular, organised and repetitive line of work. Many musicians have what are known as Portfolio Careers, where they take on various forms of work. As 66% of people working in Music, Performance and Creative Arts are self-employed (Newson N. (2025)), this way of working is a logical way to maximise income and time spent working. Teague and Smith (2015) both confirm the
“perceived benefits for musicians of flexible, entrepreneurial working”.
Working in pit bands is not always be flexible due to regular and repetitive hours and the need for all musicians to be present. Many may find this hard to work with, especially around families and other commitments.
Because of the lack of flexibility in work hours, it’s necessary for chair holders to use deputy players to allow them time away from the pit. “The deputy system is an efficient and long-established way of organising musicians” – Musicians Union (2024).
Typically when a chairholder takes time off the show, it is down to them to organise the dep (with approval of the Musical Director), Including confirmation texts on the morning of the show and being sent up-to-date recordings and materials (Musicians Union (2024)).
This allows pit band work to fit better into a portfolio career, when I spoke to Tommy Emmerton via Zoom in early 2025, he mentioned the typical practice of Theatre musicians is to constantly search for higher paying work that can replace the regular Theatre work, utilising deps to take time off. It could be said that this system may be ideal for a portfolio musician, being able to work varying jobs with a stable well-paying job to keep as a ‘baseline’ form of income and work.
Financial / Legal Issues
While the generally perceived advantage to pit band work in the West End is financial stability, it wouldn’t be completely without issues. While not something likely to happen again, Covid-19 was a massive hit for the West End with all theatres closing down, the General Secretary of the Musicians Union (2020) said “We have over 300 musicians working in the West End who are facing the prospect of weeks or months without paid work as a result of this decision. Hundreds more are engaged on touring productions”.
As we know, this issue wasn’t isolated to the West End, with some musicians losing 80% of their work (Laura Evans (2022)) and many losing more.
West end shows typically have a limited run and don’t hang around forever, there are a handful of shows that have had very long runs, but many shows have shorter runs due to poor reception or financial income. In 2004, a musical ‘Wilde’ closed it’s doors after only one night due to poor reviews and ticket sales (BBC News (2004)). Situations like this could create instability for a musicians work-life and a lack of work at sudden notice.
Another issue surrounding this line of work is the gender imbalance in West End pit bands. Only 27% of West End band performers are women (Musicians Union (2023)), this is lower than the balance of women performing on-stage in the West End. This suggests there may be biases against women in this line of work, making it harder for women to become successful and find work in this industry. The figure of 27% is a notable improvement from a figure of 11% in 2018 mentioned in Marshall’s (2024) A Man’s World? Analysing gender diversity within London’s West End Pit Orchestras. But nether-the-less, this could certainly be a hardship for women trying to break through in the industry.
Career Progression
As previously mentioned, musicians, especially guitarists, will typically start by sitting in on West End shows then Depping on a show or touring production before gaining a permanent chair position in a pit band. Once a chair position has been secured, there isn’t a whole lot of progression available in that specific production, especially for guitarists. While there are jobs higher in the line of the work, such as a Musical Director, the skills needed are vastly different (including keyboard proficiency). So most guitarists wouldn’t typically progress past a chair holder.
In terms of a broader portfolio musician career, having the qualification of being a chairholder on a West End show is very prestigious due to the difficulty of landing the job, leading to other careers. As an electric guitarist, this qualification really sets a player apart from many in the music industry, there aren’t lots of jobs outside of Theatre that require proficient reading, adaptability and orchestral playing for electric guitarists but the jobs that do can often be high-paying in areas like high-end session work, corporate work and large orchestral work. Breaking into this niche can be highly rewarding for a guitar player, allowing musicians to unlock a level of work that many guitarists could not . As an example, Book of Mormon Guitarist Tommy Emmerton also regularly plays for the BBC Big Band and BBC Concert Orchestra (Tommy Emmerton – Instagram (2025)).
Conclusion
To conclude, getting into the West End Theatre industry as a Pit Guitarist is not an easy task. The nature of the job is difficult for most guitarists and requires lots of practice in the niche skill of reading staff notation, forming the connections and earning the trust of previous players to start depping on these shows is also difficult. However the job can be incredibly rewarding and stable with good pay and conditions for musicians working in theatre, and can be seen as very prestigious and respectable within the music industry and can often lead to gigs which many guitarists without reading/orchestral experience couldn’t land.
References
Musicians Union (2024), Working in the West End. https://musiciansunion.org.uk/working-performing/theatre-work/working-in-the-west-end
Musicians Union (2025), Navigating the Pit: A Practical Guide for Musicians Who Want to Get into Theatre. https://musiciansunion.org.uk/working-performing/theatre-work/navigating-the-pit-a-practical-guide-for-musicians-who-want-to-get-into-theatre
Tommy Emmerton (2nd February 2025), Via Zoom Call
Noad, F.M. (1994), Solo Guitar Playing Book I. Schirmer Books
Harrison E. (2010), Challenges Facing Guitar Education. Music Educators Journal
Musicians Union (2025) The Society of London Theatre (‘West End’ of London) Agreement. https://musiciansunion.org.uk/working-performing/theatre-work/theatre-agreements-and-rates-of-pay/the-society-of-london-theatre-west-end-of-london-agreement
London Theatre (2022) Find out the running times of West End shows
https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/theatre-news/news/west-end-shows-running-times
Musicians Union (2025) SOLT / MU Rates 2023-2026
https://musiciansunion.org.uk/working-performing/theatre-work/theatre-agreements-and-rates-of-pay/the-society-of-london-theatre-west-end-of-london-agreement
Musicians Union (2012) The Working Musician Report.
https://musiciansunion.org.uk/working-performing/education-and-teaching/music-education-policy-and-reports/the-working-musician-report
Newson N. (2025) Creative Industries: Growth, jobs and productivity. House of Lords Library
https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/creative-industries-growth-jobs-and-productivity/#ref-8
Teague and Smith (2015) Portfolio Careers and work-life balance among musicians: An initial study into implications for higher music education. Cambridge University Press
Musicians Union (2024) Depping in Theatre.
https://musiciansunion.org.uk/working-performing/theatre-work/depping-in-theatre
Musicians Union (2024) West End Depping Code of Conduct
https://musiciansunion.org.uk/working-performing/theatre-work/west-end-depping-code-of-conduct
Pohl N. (2020), Advice for Members in Response to Closure of West End and Regional Theatre. Musicians Union
https://musiciansunion.org.uk/news/advice-for-members-in-response-to-closure-of-west-end-and-regional-theatres
Laura Evans (2022) The Road To Recovery: Musicians and Covid. Musicians Union
https://musiciansunion.org.uk/news/the-road-to-recovery-musicians-and-covid
BBC News (2004) Wilde show flops after one night
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/3944431.stm
Musicians Union (2023) Number of Women in West End Bands at Record High https://musiciansunion.org.uk/news/number-of-women-in-west-end-bands-at-record-high
Emily Marshall (2024) A Man’s World? Analysing gender diversity within London’s West End Pit Orchestras. University of Huddersfield
Tommy Emmerton (2025), ’Jolly good fun sharing guitar duties….’ Instagram Post 24th November 2025
https://www.instagram.com/p/DRb2wboDQPL/?img_index=1
