Duncan Sheik, who has died aged 56 after suffering from heart failure, went from being a teen pop heart-throb with his hit Barely Breathing (1996) to an accomplished theatre composer. He wrote the score of the Broadway musical Spring Awakening (2006), based on Frank Wedekind’s 1891 play about adolescent sexual desire, and at the time of his death had scores in two new shows: Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen, opening off-Broadway in September, and Nero, at Southwark Playhouse in south London this November.
Sheik’s tandem careers seemed to energise each other. Each of his nine studio albums (most recently Claptrap in 2022) had a sharpening sense of narrative, influenced by his theatre work. Expressive vocal lines were often framed by an instrumental, iridescent glisten.
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