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 Lee Gillette had invited the Mirisch people to hear what the Kenton/Richards collaboration had produced (listen to the mix and mastering). The movie producers were very impressed, "We had no idea! If we only knew!". The implication being the Capitol produced "West Side Story" could or would have been part of the soundtrack. In the end, full endorsement was given by Mirisch to allow a still photo from the movie to be used as the cover of "Kenton's West Side Story." As it happened both the Kenton LP and Columbia Records produced sound track co-existed beautifully on the commercial market