| Whisper House | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | January 27, 2009 (U.S.) | |||
| Label | RCA Victor (U.S.; CD) | |||
| Producer | Duncan Sheik | |||
| Duncan Sheik chronology | ||||
| ||||
| Singles from Whisper House | ||||
| ||||
| Aggregate scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| Metacritic | (71/100) [1] |
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   [2] |
| The A.V. Club | B+ [3] |
| Paste | (7.9/10) [4] |
| PopMatters |   [5] |
Whisper House is the sixth studio album and second musical by American singer-songwriter Duncan Sheik. It was released on RCA Victor in 2009.
The album, Sheik's first in the wake of success from composing music for the Tony Award-winning musical Spring Awakening , contains selections from an original stage musical of the same name, with book and additional lyrics by Kyle Jarrow. [6] The world premiere of the musical occurred January 13, 2010, at San Diego, California's Old Globe Theatre. [7] Directed by Peter Askin, the cast included Arthur Acuna, Holly Brook, Kevin Hoffman, Ted Koch, David Poe, Mare Winningham, and Eric Brent Zutty. [8] Sheik cited influences from part of his childhood spent around Hilton Head, South Carolina, and recalling its iconic lighthouse and the ghost stories he shared there with friends. [9]
The album was met with little commercial success, but favorable reviews. Review aggregating website Metacritic reports a normalized score of 71% based on 4 reviews. [1] The album's first single, "Earthbound Starlight", debuted via the "Pop Candy" blog on USAToday.com. [10] On Sheik's official website, streaming audio was made available for the album's first single, as well as its first and second tracks, in advance of the album release. [11]
David Goldstein, better known as Rupert Holmes, is a British-American composer, singer-songwriter, musician, dramatist and author. He is widely known for the hit singles "Escape " (1979) and "Him" (1980). He is also known for his musicals The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which earned him two Tony Awards, and Curtains, and for his television series Remember WENN.
Duncan Sheik is an American singer-songwriter and composer. Sheik is known for his 1996 debut single "Barely Breathing", which earned him a Grammy Award nomination for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. He has composed music for motion pictures and Broadway musicals, winning the 2006 Tony Awards for Best Original Score and Best Orchestrations for his work on the musical Spring Awakening.
Stephen Flaherty is an American composer of musical theatre and film. He works most often in collaboration with the lyricist/book writer Lynn Ahrens. They are best known for writing the Broadway musicals Ragtime, which was nominated for thirteen Tony Awards, two Grammy Awards, and won the Tony for Best Original Score; Once on This Island, which won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical, the Olivier Award for London's Best Musical, and was nominated for a Grammy Award and eight Tony Awards; and Seussical, which was nominated for a Grammy and is now one of the most performed shows in America. Flaherty was also nominated for two Academy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards for his songs and song score for the animated film musical Anastasia.
Ghost Whisperer is an American supernatural television series, which ran on CBS from September 23, 2005, to May 21, 2010.
Holly Brook Hafermann, known professionally as Skylar Grey, is an American singer, songwriter and record producer from Mazomanie, Wisconsin. In 2004, at the age of 17, Grey signed a publishing deal with Universal Music Publishing Group and a recording contract with Machine Shop Recordings under the name Holly Brook. In 2006, she released her debut studio album, Like Blood Like Honey, under the aforementioned labels.
Eden Erica Espinosa is an American actress and singer who is best known for her performances as Elphaba for the Broadway, Los Angeles, and San Francisco productions of the musical Wicked.
Phantom Moon is the third album by American singer-songwriter Duncan Sheik. It was released on Nonesuch Records in 2001.
Grey Gardens is a musical with book by Doug Wright, music by Scott Frankel, and lyrics by Michael Korie, produced in 2006 and based on the 1975 documentary of the same title about the lives of Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edith Bouvier Beale by Albert and David Maysles. The Beales were Jacqueline Kennedy's aunt and cousin, respectively. Set at Grey Gardens, the Bouviers' mansion in East Hampton, New York, the musical tracks the progression of the two women's lives from their original status as rich and socially polished aristocrats to their eventual largely isolated existence in a home overrun by cats and cited for repeated health code violations. However, its more central purpose is to untangle the complicated dynamics of their dysfunctional mother/daughter relationship.
Spring Awakening is a coming-of-age rock musical with music by Duncan Sheik and a book and lyrics by Steven Sater. It is based on the 1891 German play Spring Awakening by Frank Wedekind. Set in late 19th-century Germany, the musical tells the story of teenagers discovering the inner and outer tumult of adolescent sexuality. In the musical, alternative rock is employed as part of the folk-infused rock score.
Steven Sater is a Tony Award, Grammy Award, and Laurence Olivier Award-winning American poet, playwright, lyricist, television writer and screenwriter. He is best known for writing the book and lyrics for the Tony Award-winning 2006 Broadway musical Spring Awakening.
Kyle Jarrow is a Los Angeles–based writer and rock musician.
Jason D. Danieley is an American actor, singer, concert performer and recording artist. He was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and was married to fellow performer Marin Mazzie.
"Bite Your Tongue" was released as a single on February 2, 1999 and is found on Duncan Sheik's second studio album, Humming. The song was called "a driving hard-pop number" by Rolling Stone's Neva Chonin, "self-deprecating" by Allmusic's Roxanne Blanford and Elysa Gardner from the Los Angeles Times said: "The single “Bite Your Tongue” rocks harder and more buoyantly than his previous hits.". The song would also appear as a bonus track on the 2004 Daylight CD and on the 2006 double disk album Brighter/Later: A Duncan Sheik Anthology, released by Rhino Records
Little House on the Prairie is a book musical adapted from the children's books, Little House on the Prairie, by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Covers 80s is the seventh album by American singer/songwriter Duncan Sheik. It was released on Sneaky Records in 2011. The album is composed of covers of songs by British artists originally released in the 1980s.
American Psycho is a musical with music and lyrics by Duncan Sheik and a book by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa. It is based on the controversial 1991 novel American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, which also inspired a 2000 film of the same name, which starred Christian Bale. Set in Manhattan during the Wall Street boom of the late 1980s, American Psycho is about the daily life of Patrick Bateman, a wealthy young investment banker who is also a serial killer.
Six is a British musical comedy with book, music, and lyrics by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss. The musical is a modern retelling of the lives of the six wives of Henry VIII presented as a pop concert, as the Queens take turns singing and telling their story to see who suffered the most due to Henry and should, therefore, become the group's lead singer.
Alice by Heart is a musical with music by Duncan Sheik, lyrics by Steven Sater, and a book by Sater with Jessie Nelson. The musical is inspired by Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and was originally presented by London's Royal National Theatre in 2012.
Nell Benjamin is a lyricist, writer, and composer noted for her work in musical theatre. With her husband and frequent collaborator Laurence O'Keefe, she won the Laurence Olivier Award for writing Legally Blonde in 2011. And in 2007, she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Original Score for Legally Blonde, and then again in 2018 for her lyrics for Mean Girls.
Jeb Brown is an American actor known for his work in theatre. Brown has appeared in productions on- and off-Broadway including Grease, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, and Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, in which he originated the role of Don Kirshner.
