After Broadway "Awakening", Sheik offers "Whisper"

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Singer-songwriter Duncan Sheik is breathing just fine these days, thank you.

In 1996, his first single, "Barely Breathing," reached the top 10 on the top 40, adult top 40 and adult contemporary charts, spent a then-record-setting 55 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 and earned a Grammy Award nomination for best male pop vocal.

Despite this auspicious beginning, radio turned its back on Sheik, and it took more than a decade for the perplexed musician to regain footing in the business.

In 2007, Sheik transitioned to Broadway as composer and arranger of "Spring Awakening." It won the Tony Award for best musical and two trophies for him personally: best orchestration and best original score.

"I'm the first to admit that my career as singer-songwriter and recording artist was in a very tenuous place," Sheik says. "Between my first album until 'Spring Awakening' hit on Broadway, it was hard to keep the faith and feel like my work was connecting. Culture was in a completely different direction from where I was going. I was thinking that maybe it was time to transition to a career in home inspection."

Now, Sheik is returning to his own music with "Whisper House," released January 27 on Victor Records/Sony. The set is not only his first pop CD since 2006's "White Limousine," but it's also the score for his next theatrical endeavor.

The concept was born out of a visit to Maine with "30 Rock" actor Keith Powell, where the pair was inspired after finding a spooky lighthouse. Playwright Kyle Jarrow was given the mission of writing a play, while Sheik retreated to an island off Charleston, S.C. -- itself a renowned region of mystery and spirits -- to compose the music.

GRIEF, LONGING AND WHIMSY

The 10 pieces Sheik crafted have a narrative approach to songwriting, with elements of chamber pop, rock and folk. As the tracks unfold, a story emerges of a child's grief and a spinster's longing as seen through the eyes of ghosts that haunt a remote, World War II-era lighthouse where they live.

"I'm singing in the persona of one of the ghosts," says Sheik, who is accompanied on many of the songs by his 21-year-old protege Holly Brooke. "We drowned at a Halloween party in 1912, so we're dressed in fancy dress costumes of the day." He is an illusionist, she a geisha.

While there are sinister elements in the eerie instrumentation and lyrics that might be described as cautionary tales, Sheik insists there's plenty of eye-winking in "Whisper House." On "In the Tale of Solomon Snow," for instance, ghosts are advising young protagonist Christopher that one can live their entire life in fear -- and despite every precaution, despite always trying to play it safe, you can still end up foiled -- so why obsess?

"I call that the Bush doctrine," Sheik says with a laugh. "There are many of these kinds of funny themes, with these whimsically malevolent ghosts singing to Christopher."

With the songs outlined in South Carolina, Sheik came home to New York, where he fleshed them out instrumentally and passed them along to his manager. To his surprise, the response was, "'These are finished songs. You've got your next record. Why would you not want to put this out?' Actually, since I was caught up in the musical, the idea hadn't even occurred to me."

"Whisper House" the musical is still in workshops, as Sheik hits the road with a career retrospective tour across the United States through March. The theatrical version will premiere later this year in a regional workshop in Delaware. Sheik is also working on two other theater projects: "Nero (Another Golden Rome)," about the decadent life of the Roman emperor, and "The Nightingale," a fairy tale based on the story by Hans Christian Anderson, slated to open this year in San Francisco at the American Conservatory Theater.

And "Spring Awakening" keeps rolling: It launched January 23 at London's Lyric Hammersmith Theater and is opening in Helsinki in Finnish. "It's the gift that keeps on giving," Sheik says.

Reuters/Billboard