Artist Profile
Duncan Sheik, the composer of Spring Awakening, was born in 1969, about the same time as the rock musical. Sheik was the child of well-off parents. Introduced to classical music by his pianist grandmother, he instead took up the electric guitar and played in a high school cover band. He received an elite education at Andover Prep and Brown University, where he studied semiotics, the study of signs and symbols and their uses. While at Brown, he wrote songs and played guitar for Lisa Loeb’s college band.
His first album was the self-titled Duncan Sheik, released in 1996. Rolling Stone called it “a defiant debut – beautiful and benevolent of spirit.” Sheik’s guitar-based alt-rock songs attracted an enthusiastic young audience, with the enduring hit single “Barely Breathing,” as well as “She Runs Away,” and “Reasons for Living.”
He has revealed that when creating a song, he often imagines it sung by Thom Yorke of Radiohead — a band that was a strong influence, lyrically and musically, on Sheik’s entire generation of singer-songwriters. Sheik rapidly became a favorite headphones-in-the-bedroom artist for smart but alienated 90s teenagers, with tracks that were thrillingly angsty, but a bit one-sided in their take on failed relationships. (Spoiler: It’s always her fault.) However, one-sided can be just the thing to help develop compelling story characters, and Sheik soon found an artistic outlet in the mediums of theater and film.
While continuing his performing and studio album work, Sheik composed quirky original music for New York Shakespeare Festival’s 2002 production of Twelfth Night and the soundtrack for the 2005 documentary film Through the Fire. His greatest success remains Spring Awakening, with lyrics and book by Playwright/poet Steven Sater and based on the notorious expressionist play by Frank Wedekind.
Sheik and Sater workshopped Spring Awakening for seven years. Its theme of the erotic fantasies of teenagers in sexually repressive homes and schools was ideal for Sheik’s own penchant for adolescent angst. Sater’s book and lyrics allowed Sheik to fully express a female point of view, expanding his emotional range. The story gave Sheik a chance to write evocative music for characters he drew upon in his personal work, while the structure allowed the characters to step outside the story for commentary in interior monologues, singing concert-style into hand-held microphones. The Sheik/Sater adaptation hit a bullseye for teen theater audiences of 2006, winning 8 Tony Awards® and 4 Drama Desk Awards that year. A revival opening in 2015 received another 3 award nominations.
Now in his 50s, Duncan Sheik shows no signs of stopping. In addition to several projects currently in development, he has continued his adventurous stage writing with American Psycho (with an electronica score), Because of Winn-Dixie (lyrics by Legally Blonde’s Nell Benjamin), and The Taming of the Shrew for Washington D.C.’s Shakespeare Theatre Company.