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 harmonic and rhythmic structures. To fill in the blanks, there are numerous 'Richard-isms' in "Kenton's West Side Story" that surface musically; a great deal of sylistic characteristics of his renderings of Bernstein's music are borrowed from the successful 1956 "Cuban Fire!" LP and his other Kenton orchestrations. Many of the Afro-Latin themes from both Kenton LPs ("Cuban Fire!" vs "West Side Story") are similar but both retain their uniqueness in the hands of Richards. It is mentioned earlier about Mirisch Company executive being impressed with the Johnny Richards orchestrations but in the end there is little doubt Richards designed his