Hal Leonard The New Broadway Fake Book

The New Broadway Fake Book is a working musician's reference library compressed into a single volume — 600 songs from 285 Broadway productions arranged in the universal lead sheet format that gigging pianists, vocal coaches, and rehearsal accompanists have relied on for decades. Rather than locking players into a fixed arrangement, the melody-plus-chords format gives skilled accompanists the harmonic skeleton to voice and interpret each song according to the performer's needs and the room's demands. Whether it's a late request at a cabaret, a cold audition piece from a singer you've never worked with, or a pit rehearsal where the conductor calls an audible, having this catalog in hand means yes is almost always the answer.

The physical book is organized to serve professional use: songs are indexed by title and by show, which is how working musicians actually search for repertoire in real time. The chord symbols follow standard fake book notation, readable by anyone trained in harmonic analysis or jazz-influenced lead sheet literacy. The breadth of the catalog — spanning the Golden Age of Rodgers and Hammerstein through the present era of contemporary musical theater — means it serves equally as a historical reference and a current professional tool. For music directors, vocal coaches, and rehearsal pianists who need one book to cover nearly every situation a Broadway repertoire session can throw at them, this is the reference that earns permanent shelf space.