Over the past eleven years, Duncan Sheik has proven himself as one of Broadway's and the pop world's most compelling storytellers. Building on the success of the Tony and Grammy award-winning musical Spring Awakening and multiple critically acclaimed solo albums, Sheik is finishing up a two-month tour promoting his latest release, Whisper House.
As Sheik explained from the Berklee Performance Center stage, Whisper House is both a record and an in-production musical. Whisper House tells the story of a child and spinster living in a Maine lighthouse during World War II. Sheik asked the audience to imagine that singer-keyboardist Holly Brooke and he were ghosts, as these supernatural beings unfurl the narrative in the story.
This is the second time Sheik has used a ghost motif in his work. With 2001's Phantom Moon, Sheik launched his partnership with Steven Sater, later of Spring Awakening fame. Remarkably unnoticed, Phantom Moon remains one of Sheik's most emotional, poetic, and beautifully orchestrated productions to date. Though Whisper House has greater pop and melodramatic ambitions, it rivals Phantom Moon's narrative and musical achievements.
Playing ghost along with Sheik, Brooke offers haunting and pure vocals on the album and on tour. At just 21 and with years of touring with Sheik under her belt, Brooke is an impressive rising star.
Engagingly unfolding the narratives of Spring Awakening and Whisper House from the stage, Sheik showed that his storytelling skills go beyond pen and paper. The audience learned about Sheik's writing process as he described a retreat in Charleston, South Carolina, where he absorbed the ghost story culture of the old Southern town.
The performance was seasoned with a handful of Sheik's solo pop hits, including "She Runs Away"; noticeably absent was his tepid yet remarkably successful debut single, "Barely Breathing."
Sheik brought eight performers with him to Berklee, including Brooke and Lauren Pritchard, who played Ilse in Spring Awakening's original Broadway production. The Performance Center was filled with musical theater fans; a set of Spring Awakening pieces, as well as Pritchard's short opening set of solo compositions, earned the greatest applause of the night.
With their beautifully executed and thoughtful performance, Sheik and his band offered a lovely introduction to Whisper House the album and an enticing sneak peak of the upcoming theater production. The Berklee crowd will certainly be some of the first to buy tickets when Whisper House eventually takes the stage and stands staring into the footlights.
