posted July 02, 2002 11:00 AM            

Wow! August, really? That would be Fantabulous!

posted July 02, 2002 11:01 AM            

If you're registered at nytimes.com, you can check out the article here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/02/nyregion/02PROF.html

posted July 03, 2002 09:57 PM            

SHAKESPEARE is his co-songwriter on this venture, so Duncan Sheik, the supersensitive, superspiritual pop troubadour who composed the score for "Twelfth Night," the Public Theater's summer offering of Shakespeare in Central Park, is not obsessing about his tuneful take on Illyria.

Mr. Sheik is so comfortable working with dead lyricists that he once devoted a concert to replicating "Pink Moon," an revered piece by an unsung hero of his, the dead-by-overdose British folkie, Nick Drake. The "Twelfth Night" song lyrics were written some four centuries ago, so no need to worry about whipping them out in time for the opening tonight; it's the music, particularly those 38 little spots where the cues call for brief melodic transitions, that is giving Mr. Sheik fits.

He says the stage manager has "been cracking the whip" at all hours. Just the other morning, Mr. Sheik was summoned from his Hudson Street loft with its built-in studio to the Delacorte Theater for more last-minute edits. Musicians tend not to relish being summoned anyplace early in the morning, and Mr. Sheik, 32, single and very much the happy turtle in his musical shell when at home, is no exception. Part of the serenity of being a practicing Buddhist since he was 19 has been Buddhism's tendency to keep him on an emotional even keel, but he is teetering on frazzled after being up most of the night with a dulcimer, glockenspiel, harmonium and ukulele creating transition cues that sound timeless but last just 20 seconds.

"It's been more difficult than I thought, and if I wasn't intimidated at first, I am now," he says. "There's an aspect of it being a labor of love."

Casting his lot with Shakespeare gave him cause to dust off his degree in semiotics from Brown University and wax historic after spending much of June attending to the logistics of completing his fourth album, "Daylight," in Los Angeles. Mr. Sheik, who had his first and last hit with the cathartic "Barely Breathing" in 1996, nearly blushes when speculating that this new album is his "most accessible yet." His last, "Phantom Moon," which hooked "Twelfth Night" director Brian Kulick, was quite the opposite.

ANYWAY, he and his fans will have to wait until "Daylight's" August release to confirm his prediction. Meantime, a tiny scowl ripples the fatigue stubble on his unshaven cheeks. He looks as if he could use a chanting session at the impressive altar in the living room alcove, one of the few spots in this rugged 2,000-square-foot space where the concrete floor is softened by kilim rugs. Raised Catholic in Hilton Head, S.C., Mr. Sheik, an only child whose parents split up when he was 1, and who worshiped King Crimson, Genesis, and Peter Gabriel by 12, switched to Buddhism out of intellectual curiosity and post-adolescent angst. "Buddhism is kind of the underpinning to all I do; it's understanding that you are not your little problems, that everything is flux."

How about the little problem of having to bang out transitional tune-ettes for "Twelfth Night"? Mr. Sheik sighs and sends a hand through his upswept bangs. For a guy who had never seen Shakespeare performed in Central Park, he admits it was mind-blowing, during preview week, to sit in the audience with his mother and his girlfriend.

"It's nice to make music and have it be performed in a situation where I'm not the front man," he says. "I don't mind being entertained, but I don't particularly like entertaining people. And so many things that pass for entertainment I find no redeeming value in whatsoever: I don't feel like I'm being a snob when I say reality TV makes me ill."

Mr. Sheik changes his uptown clothes for denim and settles at a wooden dining table where, if the empty kitchen is any indication, very little dining gets done. When one's college roommate happens to be a genuine princeling, Alexander Von Furstenberg, one's social life goes places where fancy meals and fancier women abound. Not that Mr. Sheik is the butterfly the style pages paint him as; well, maybe part time.

"It's funny how I get this reputation, but I don't know that many famous people, I swear," he says. He wonders why the Bonos and Jaggers of the rock universe — "Not that I'm comparing myself to them!" — circulate unhampered while he takes the heat for his downtown connections. Yes, he hangs out with Mr. Von Furstenberg; yes, he's producing the D.J. Samantha Ronson's debut; yes, he was Lisa Loeb's guitarist back at Brown. He's also made four albums and written songs for three musicals. Sounds like Mr. Sheik is serious about being taken seriously. Sometimes too serious, according to his mother, whose constructive criticism of "Phantom Moon" was that it was a touch depressing and, ouch, pretentious.