West Side Story West Side Story West Side Story is a musical with book by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. It was inspired by William Shakespeare's play "Romeo and Juliet". The story is set in the Upper West Side neighborhood in New York City in the mid 1950s, an ethnic, blue-collar neighborhood (in the early 1960s, much of the neighborhood was cleared in an urban renewal project for Lincoln Center, which changed the neighborhood's character). The musical explores the rivalry between the Jets and the Sharks, two teenage street gangs of different ethnic backgrounds. The members of
Kenton's West Side Story by Johnny Richards for "Kenton's West Side Story" is outstanding but was difficult to execute. Due to the taxing brass writing there are 7 trumpets used on the sessions, 2 of them being kept in reserve to give other trumpet players a needed break while recording. Many of the earlier problems presented with the mellophonium had been worked out making this the first score and recording sessions (other than Christmas music or ballads) that really worked for this new incarnation of the Kenton band. Richards thought the original Broadway score to be repetitive and appropriate alterations were made to the