August Eriksmoen is an orchestrator and album producer of Broadway musicals and cast recordings, including a credit with Water for Elephants, now playing at the Imperial Theatre.
The Beacon resident, who has been nominated for a Tony and a Grammy and won a Laurence Olivier Award from the Society of London Theatre for Come from Away, works with high-end equipment and expansive ensembles.
Yet the main photo on his website shows him holding a mandolin, a shot taken during a performance by Bees in the Barn, his modern string band that is rooted in country music.
“It’s my favorite thing to do,” he says. “I compose songs for film and TV and aspire to write for theater, but this format gives me a lot of space.”
When commissioned, Eriksmoen receives a piano sketch, the vocal parts and the number of instruments to write for (usually eight to 18 for Broadway shows and 25 to 100 for TV and film). “The band size is often dictated by the budget,” he says. “I have no control over what the configuration of musicians will be.”
After devising parts in his head, he inputs them to notation software. Whenever possible, he knocks out a song per day and plays back the scores to see if he missed a flat here or a sharp there.
Then, he attends early rehearsals to work with the composer and fine-tune. “I’m there to help the musicians with the interpretation and get instant feedback from the composer,” he says. “We tweak the orchestration on the stands, right there.”
His film and TV work includes ABC’s Once Upon a Time, the Hulu series Only Murders in the Building and the Disney film Descendants. Broadway credits include Prince of Egypt and Million Dollar Quartet.
The Tony nomination recognized his score for the Steve Martin and Edie Brickell musical Bright Star, which is rooted in bluegrass.
Bees in the Barn — consisting of Eriksmoen on mandolin, Sara Milonovich on fiddle, guitarist Jordan Shapiro and upright bass player Nate Allen — specializes in songs and instrumentals loosely based on 18th-century fiddle tunes that veer into experimental territory.
The group releases its songs online and plays occasional gigs, like a recent show in Poughkeepsie sponsored by the Hudson Valley Bluegrass Association. Eriksmoen served as master of ceremonies.
The sophisticated arrangements of his original songs can present musical minefields when played live. Jagged, percussive passages requiring pinpoint timing melt into fluid melodic moments. In some tunes, the rhythm lopes along and then the dynamic turns on a dime as the tempo begins racing and feet start tapping.
Unlike nearly every country-rooted string band across the land, Eriksmoen notates the music and reads it off an iPad during performances. At the gig, he cued the other musicians to impending changes, which they hit with the precision of a Swiss watch.
The compact compositions blend in elements of Tin Pan Alley (“Malted Waltz”), classical (“Waterbug,” “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot”) and gypsy jazz (“Fermata,” “Memorial” and “Moose on the Loose”).
Parts of “Fermata” evoke something Frank Zappa might have composed for a four-piece string band. The thrill ride “Eclipse” starts with a chugging vamp. After the fiddle plays a squiggly melody line, intricate shifting parts fray into strands that eventually interlock. Out of nowhere, a bluegrass-style guitar solo breaks out.
Eriksmoen grew up in southern California and his father often played country. “I heard a lot of Chet Atkins,” he recalls. His wife, Jessica Welch, a native of Arkansas, will perform Patsy Cline songs on Bannerman Island in July.
After attending Berklee College of Music in Boston, Eriksmoen moved to Manhattan, then relocated to Beacon in 2011 after visiting friends. The Bees began to buzz six years later.
He took up the mandolin in part, he says, because it’s tuned like a violin and helps with his string arranging. “I get a better sense of the violinist’s left hand, what intervals work and how I can move around note-wise,” he says.
During the Poughkeepsie show, Eriksmoen brought up a second fiddler and a banjo picker to play a few bluegrass standards like “Blue Moon of Kentucky” (with lead vocals by Welch) and the barn-burner “Rolling in My Sweet Baby’s Arms.”
“I love the local bluegrass community,” he says. “Ninety-nine percent of the time, I’m at home alone doing my work, so it’s nice to get out, play with a group and bond with other musicians.”
To hear Bees in the Barn’s music, see beesinthebarn.com.
