Live Performance Report: 'West Side Story' By Leonard Bernstein

For my live performance report, I saw “Bernstein's West Side Story” at the San Francisco Symphony on Friday, September 22. The chorus was made up of male and female singers ranging from bases to sopranos. Some of those singers were professionals; others were volunteers. There were also instrumentalists including trombonists, percussionists, and cellists. The music was composed by Leonard Bernstein, one of the most famous composers of the 20th century. Leonard Bernstein was born in 1918 and died in 1990. Based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Leonard Bernstein set out to write one of his most well known works: “West Side Story”. “West Side Story” is a musical about a couple that was kept apart because of their families who were rival gangs. It was first seen

In other other words, the chorus wasn’t as good as a professional chorus would be. However, the chorus had a loud sound and could carry a tune which are great qualities for a chorus. On the other hand, the two professional soloists that I mentioned earlier were phenomenal and great performers. They had strong voices that harmonized very well and showed their emotions on their faces as well. Their only weakness was that they weren’t very professional and broke character a few times which would bring the audience out of the setting created by their facial expressions and tone of voice. The orchestra was great. They could obviously read their music because no mistakes were heard by the audience. Nonetheless, their stage was cluttered and visually unappealing. The performers from both the orchestra and choir reminded me of the orchestra and chamber choir at Piedmont Highschool. The choir and orchestra are definitely better than Piedmont due to age and experience, but both Piedmont and the Symphony dive into the music instead of slowly easing into it. Overall, listeners should be pleased by the performance that the “San Francisco Symphony” put