Dave Grusin presents West Side Story

Dave Grusin’s arrangement of Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story for Acrobat Music strips the Broadway classic down to its harmonic and melodic essentials, letting his signature light-touch orchestration and jazz-inflected piano work reshape familiar material. Grusin’s approach favors intimate ensemble textures over theatrical grandeur, drawing out the romantic and blues-tinged dimensions of songs like “Somewhere” and “America” through subtle reharmonization and restrained strings. This is less a cover album than a reinterpretation through the lens of contemporary jazz arranging—Grusin’s warm, sophisticated touch transforms a mid-century masterwork into something that breathes like chamber jazz.