Duncan Sheik, Rocker and Spring Awakening Composer, Dead at 56

Duncan Sheik, the ’90s rock breakout and musical-theater composer, is dead at 56, the New York Times confirmed with his mother on September 18. He died of organ failure while hospitalized. Sheik will be remembered for his international Gen-X hit “Barely Breathing,” as well as his work in the theater. He wrote the music for the enduring musical Spring Awakening, which is currently in the process of being revived Off Broadway and has given voice to countless teenagers’ emotional, sexual, and physical frustrations. His latest musical, Memoirs of an Amorous Gentleman, is currently in previews Off Broadway.

Sheik was born in Montclair, New Jersey, in 1969. He began his career playing guitar for other alt-rock artists, including Lisa Loeb. In 1996, he released his self-titled first album, which included “Barely Breathing.” The song made it to No. 16 on the “Hot 100,” was nominated for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance at the Grammy Awards, and was named by VH1 as one of the 100 best songs of the 1990s. 

After his ’90s success, Sheik could have disappeared into a cloud of nostalgia like many of his contemporaries. Instead, he and playwright Steven Sater came up with the idea to adapt the 1890s coming-of-age play Frühlings Erwachen, which would become Spring Awakening, which chronicled the lives of German teenagers, into a rock musical relevant to modern audiences. The surprising idea was a hit: Spring Awakening won Best Musical at the 2007 Tony Awards, and Sheik won a Tony for Best Original Score. The musical has since become a touchstone for generations of theater kids. After Spring Awakening, Sheik wrote music for productions including Alice by Heart and the stage adaptation of American Psycho. “Over those years between 2000 and 2005 where I was trying to figure out who I was as an artist and what I was interested in doing, I was lucky to meet Steven Sater and we embarked on these various theater projects,” he told BMI in 2015, explaining what musical theater did for him as a writer. “Because of the success of Spring Awakening, I kind of felt validated again as an artist and reenergized, and I kind of felt like maybe there were still people out there who really wanted to hear the music I was making.”