Singer Duncan Sheik flings into spring with Spring Awakening. The Broadway hit returns to Chicago and to give audiences a second chance to go back to school. Sheik wrote the music for this eight-time Tony Award winner as well as his Billboard hit “Barely Breathing.” Nunn on One caught up with Sheik to discuss his musical career.
Windy City Times: Hello, Duncan. How have you been?
Duncan Sheik: Good, I just flew in from Asia.
Windy City Times: What were you doing there?
Duncan Sheik: I was touring. I had some shows in Korea and Indonesia.
Windy City Times: Spring Awakening played in Chicago a while back. What do you tell people that have never seen it before?
Duncan Sheik: It is a good musical for people that don’t really like musicals. I came from the quote normal music business and Steven Sater, who did the book and lyrics, is a writer of straight plays. We wanted to mess around with the rules and the formulas of traditional musical theatre to see if we could push the envelope a couple of different ways. For me, I wanted to do a piece of theatre where the music stylistically had more to do with contemporary music that was going on in culture.
Windy City Times: Is there a character that you have a special connection with in Spring Awakening?
Duncan Sheik: It is funny there are aspects of Melchoir that I relate to. I am somewhere in between a few characters. [Laughs]
Windy City Times: Have you been in love with your schoolteacher before?
Duncan Sheik: That’s with the character Georg. I wasn’t lucky enough to have a piano teacher like that growing up, unfortunately!
Windy City Times: I heard the guitar that you composed the songs on is in the New York Public Library now.
Duncan Sheik: It was. They had a bunch of instruments, sheet music and various Broadway composers there but I think it has been taken down since. It did have its moment in the sun.
Windy City Times: You have been working on more musicals, like American Psycho.
Duncan Sheik: I am working on American Psycho. I am halfway through writing the first draft. That is going really well. All of these things take a very long time to develop. I am hoping that American Psycho will see the light of day early in 2013. That would be a reasonable goal.
Windy City Times: It sounds like an interesting idea for a musical.
Duncan Sheik: It will make Spring Awakening look like The Wedding Singer!
Windy City Times: I was disappointed that I didn’t get to see Whisper House in New York. It was your sixth studio album and staged musical, as well.
Duncan Sheik: Well, the good news is that it looks like it is coming back. I think we are doing a production of it in Marin, San Francisco early next year then to New York. So that is pretty exciting.
Windy City Times: You could come to Chicago with it.
Duncan Sheik: If it does well on off-Broadway, then feasibly it could tour around. We will cross our fingers.
Windy City Times: I saw you perform years ago at the Market Days Festival on Halsted Street.
Duncan Sheik: I remember that. It was a wild and crazy afternoon!
Windy City Times: You raised money for AIDS awareness for the Red Hot + Rhapsody album singing George Gerswin’s “Embraceable You.”
Duncan Sheik: Yes, all of those Red Hot records are very cool. I was very honored to be a part of that collection. Whatever I can do to help out I am always very eager to work on those kinds of projects.
Windy City Times: Do you have a new album coming out soon?
Duncan Sheik: The next Duncan Sheik record is coming out June 7. It is a covers album and all ’80s but European, so [it will cover] Depeche Mode, New Order, Tears for Fears and Talk Talk—all the bands that were my big influences when growing up as a teenager.
Windy City Times: Will it be acoustic?
Duncan Sheik: It is totally acoustic—pretty much all of the songs were electronic but I have reimagined the arrangements with just acoustic instruments. It will be the other side of the coin.
Windy City Times: So that information will be on your website?
Duncan Sheik: Yes, at www.duncansheik.com/news.html. We are currently revamping the website but it will definitely have all of that info on there.
Achtung, baby! The German musical Spring Awakening only runs for one week, May 3-8, at the Oriental Theatre, 24 W. Randolph. For tickets, visit www.broadwayinchicago.com.