For a certain generation, “Barely Breathing” is the sound of 1996: car radios, mixtapes, a song that seemed to be everywhere for a year. Fewer people know that the man who wrote it started life right here, at Mountainside Hospital on the Montclair–Glen Ridge line.
Duncan Sheik, the singer-songwriter who went on to win two Tony Awards for Spring Awakening, died September 17 in a Manhattan hospital. He was 56. His mother, Suzanne Sheik, confirmed his death to The New York Times. Days earlier, his family had shared that he was in critical but stable condition. In a statement posted to his Instagram account, they remembered him as a “father, husband, son, brother, and friend.”
The Montclair Roots of Duncan Sheik
Sheik was born November 18, 1969. His grandparents lived in North Caldwell and Rumson, and he spent much of his early childhood in New Jersey. After his parents divorced, his mother moved to Hilton Head Island, S.C., where he spent most of his youth.
His feelings about his home state were complicated. Asked years later whether he considered himself a New Jerseyan, he told The Pop Break that it was a complicated question, but that people liked to rag on New Jersey and he liked to defend it. His musical training started early, at six, when his Juilliard-trained grandmother sat him down at a piano.
By his teenage years, on Hilton Head, he had picked up an electric guitar and was playing Def Leppard and Van Halen covers in a band. None of it looked like the start of a Broadway career.
How ‘Barely Breathing’ Became a 1990s Radio Fixture
Sheik went on to Brown University, where he played in a band with a young Lisa Loeb, and after college he broke through as a singer-songwriter in Los Angeles. His 1996 self-titled debut produced “Barely Breathing,” a single that spent 55 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 and earned him a Grammy nomination for best male pop vocal performance.
The song made Sheik a name. It did not make him a Broadway composer. That took a partnership with playwright Steven Sater he had not planned on.
How Spring Awakening Turned Sheik Into a Tony Winner
Sheik and Sater spent years developing Spring Awakening, a rock musical built from Frank Wedekind’s 1891 play about teenagers chafing against a repressive society. It opened on Broadway in 2006 and won eight Tony Awards, including best musical. Sheik personally won for best original score and best orchestrations. The show’s cast recording also won a Grammy.
He did not stop there. Sheik composed the scores for American Psycho, which opened in London before landing on Broadway in 2016, and The Secret Life of Bees, which premiered off Broadway in 2019.
Two New Sheik Musicals Open in New York This Fall
His newest work, Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen, a musical adaptation of Moyoco Anno’s manga with a book by Leah Nanako Winkler, begins Off Broadway performances September 25 at a new Chelsea venue called The Night Egg. A separate Off Broadway revival of Spring Awakening, his Tony-winning 2006 musical, begins previews November 27 and opens December 17 at Studio Seaview, bringing his best-known score back to the stage. Both are expected to proceed as scheduled.
Sheik is survived by his parents, Jack and Suzanne Sheik; his half siblings; his wife, Nora; and their daughter, Ines.
Image credit: Duncan Sheik Instagram
