In addition to writing the music for Spring Awakening, which received a critically acclaimed Lincoln Center American Songbook Concert staging last season, Grammy award nominated singer–songwriter Duncan Sheik collaborated with Playwright Steven Sater on The Nightingale, a musical based on the Hans Christian Andersen classic which premiered during the 26th annual O'Neill Music Theater Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center. Sheik has composed original music for the Public Theatre's Shakespeare in the Park production of Twelfth Night and for The Golden Rooms of Nero, which recently debuted at Cornell University and opened at the Magic Theater in San Francisco earlier this year. His self-titled debut album, which was an enormous popular and critical success, introduced the hit singles "Barely Breathing" and "She Runs Away," and spent 30 weeks on the Billboard 200. Other albums include "Humming," "Daylight," "Phantom Moon" with lyrics by Steven Sater and his latest, "White Limousine", which was released in January of 2006. Film Soundtracks: Great Expectations, The Saint, Teaching Mrs. Tingle, Three to Tango, What a Girl Wants, Transamerica and A Body Goes Down. Sheik recently composed and produced the original score for the feature film A Home at the End of the World, directed by Michael Mayer and starring Colin Farrell.
In plays include the long-running Carbondale Dreams, Perfect for You, Doll (Rosenthal Prize, Cincinnati Playhouse), Umbrage (Steppenwolf New Play Prize), A Footnote to the Iliad (New York Stage and Film, The Miniature Theatre of Chester), Asylum (Naked Angels), Murder at the Gates (commissioned by Eye of the Storm), In Search of Lost Wings (Sanford Meisner) and a reconceived version of Shakespeare's The Tempest, with music by Laurie Anderson, which played London's Lyric Hammersmith and toured internationally. In addition to Spring Awakening, Sater has collaborated with alt-rocker Duncan Sheik on the NY premiere of Umbrage (HERE), Nero: Another Golden Rome (The Magic Theatre), and The Nightingale (commissioned by Martin McCallum, work-shopped both at the O'Neill Musical Theatre Conference and La Jolla Playhouse, forthcoming in La Jolla's 2007 season). He is the lyricist for Sheik's critically-acclaimed album Phantom Moon (Nonesuch), and together the two wrote the songs for Michael Mayer's feature film A Home at the End of the World (Warner Classics) as well as the independent feature Brother's Shadow. Steven is co-creator and Executive Producer, with Paul Reiser, of recent pilots for both NBC and Sony/FX, and has developed two projects for HBO, and a pilot for Showtime (with Reiser). He is also at work, with Jessie Nelson, on a feature film for New Line. Nelson and together they have recently completed a rewrite of the Warner Bros animated feature, C Horse. In addition, Steven continues to work as a lyricist with a variety of composers in the pop/rock world.
