The ultimate Broadway dictionary (Ultimate Broadway Fake Book - Stanley Green)

Member Name: muppa

Product:	Ultimate Broadway Fake Book - Stanley Green
Date:	28/06/07 (36 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: An enormous amount of songs easy to find through several search indexes

Disadvantages: Misses quite a few of the big shows

Product: Ultimate Broadway Fake Book
Setting: Vocal line with chords - spiral binding
Composer: Just about anyone you can think of in musical theatre!
Published by: Hal Leonard Music Publishing
Price: RRP £23 - Cheapest at time of writing on amazon.co.u - marketplace for £17.19
Other: Promises over 700 tunes from over 240 shows from Broadway

This book has within a few months become a vital instrument in my everyday musical life. As I work a lot with musical theatre, both as a singer and an arranger of choir music, this is the book I’ve been looking for for ages: it works like a dictionary for almost all the musical theatre music I can think of.

The layout of the book is in the simple, clear fake-book style, with melody line and chords. The spiral binding makes the book easy to use despite that it is so thick (around 700 pages). When looking for a song, you can search by show, by song, by composer or by lyricist. It also contains a section in which all the shows in the book are presented with some information about composers, lyricists, production team, opening night and a short plot summery. The 4th edition is published in 1997 and includes music from musicals right up to that date – Rent from 1996 is included, for example. With the newer shows I see this book as a reference, to check out a melody or a chord progression, but once I’ve decided on a song I generally want a more complete piano accompaniment. But the bulk of the music is from older musicals, as it seems new shows have been added in this newer edition, but old shows haven’t been removed. This works out very well for several reasons. It is more difficult to get hold of the music from the less famous musicals from the 40’s and 50s, but also the music from these musicals is often ideally played in the traditional fake book layout the book uses, giving room for jazzy improvisations that often suits this type music very well.

The book should not be seen as anything complete. It contains as much as “over 720 songs from over 240 shows”, including for example some of Lloyd Webbers music, which is very seldom printed outside his own company. It does, however, miss some big Broadway shows (Sweet Charity, City of Angels, Pippin just to mention a few famous ones). It also misses a lot of musicals that were created not on Broadway but in the West End in London. Some are included, but many forgotten. The book is however an invaluable asset to any performer, providing a dictionary for a very big part of the genre musical theatre!

I highly recommend it as part of anyone’s sheet music library!

Summary: A valuable asset in the everyday work of musical theatre, composing and arranging