“My Romance” was written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart for the 1935 Broadway musical Jumbo. Bill Evans’s trio version from the 1961 Village Vanguard sessions is a jazz classic, and many singers have recorded it.
The form is a 32-bar ABAC, usually in Bb or C major. The harmony moves through the I, ii and V chords with secondary dominants and a gentle, romantic quality.
Section by section: in the A section, use guide tones to outline the ii-Vs and keep your phrases lyrical. In the B section, the secondary dominants add color; highlight their leading tones. In the C section, build toward the climax and resolve with a gentle ending. Bill Evans often started this tune as a slow ballad and moved into a medium swing, a great arrangement idea.
Practice both as a ballad and a medium swing. Pianists should study Evans’s voicings from the Vanguard recordings.
Transposing tip: Bb instruments read it in C, Eb instruments in G (from Bb concert).
Arrangement idea: start as a rubato ballad, then move into medium swing for the solos, as Bill Evans did. End by slowing back down for the final phrase.
Getting the most from the My Romance Lead Sheet PDF: start by reading the chord symbols without your instrument and humming the roots. Then circle any chord you can’t yet voice or arpeggiate, and make those your warm-up for the week before you play the whole form.
Using the My Romance Lead Sheet PDF on gigs: keep a concert-pitch copy and a copy in your instrument’s key, label the intro and ending on the page, and note the tempo and feel the band usually plays. Small notes like these keep you calm when a tune gets called on the spot.
Is it hard to play? It’s intermediate. Recordings to study: Bill Evans’s Waltz for Debby and Ella Fitzgerald’s Rodgers and Hart Songbook. Learn more about the songwriters on the Rodgers and Hart Wikipedia page, and find more ballads on Minedit.