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 Kenton band of the "West Side Story" score. Kenton has assembled a huge orchestra to play the exciting music from the show and top-flight stereo recording make the listener's room jump with the life of the music. Naturally there are good doses of jazz in the set and some tine solo highlights by Kenton himself at piano. The excellence of the LP as a whole, effective use of stereo positioning, and release timed with showing of the "West Side" motion picture all should aid in sales of the album." Review on 1999 CD reissue "When the producers of the film