Music Interview: CODY FRY (Appearing in Concert with The Hollywood Bowl Orchestra at Disney Hall)

CAUGHT YOU AT A GOOD TIME

[Editor’s Note, Jan 8, 2025: Due to the Los Angeles fires, the January 10 concert has been postponed. It will be rescheduled.]

When Cody Fry is asked to reflect about the present moment — just seven days from his January 10th show at Walt Disney Concert Hall, his first ever in Los Angeles, four years after his initial Grammy nomination in 2021 for Best Orchestral Arrangement of The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby,” and recently nominated again in 2025 for his reworking of Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence” — he sounds genuinely delighted, even baffled by his success. “I tell my wife this all the time,” he says, “but I’m constantly worried someone’s going to show up at my door one day and say, ‘Hey man, you can’t be doing this anymore.’”

But Cody Fry is no impostor. You can’t, you won’t want to, call his bluff. His talent and charm make it impossible to doubt him. Beyond being incredibly nice, he’s a lively, gifted musician and musical intellectual. At 34, Cody has carved out a unique niche in the compelling genre which he calls “orchestral pop,” and his musical north stars are not what you’d expect from someone who started out milking the indie-folk scene of the 2010s. By his third album, Flying, he was blending the acoustic strumming-songster sounds of that era with the grand, contemplative scope of orchestration he admires in composers like John Williams and Dario Marinelli, forging the style that culminated in his 2017 release and viral 2021 hit, “I Hear a Symphony.”

About this process of accepting his authentic musical identity, Fry says: “I thought to myself, this is what makes me unique. I have this thing that I can do, orchestration.” Although financial constraints prevented him initially from fully realizing the sound which he knew would set him apart, he eventually got it, culminating in such successful albums as 2023’s The End. The title refers to both the perceived doom of an anxiety attack, and also to contractual changes in Cody’s recording career. Working with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, The End is in many ways a climactic moment, a beginning really, of those musical concerns that make Cody Fry a very distinguishing presence on the scene, and not just in “beautifully livable” Nashville, where, as he jokingly states, his Country and Christian colleagues sometimes look at him like, what are you even doing?

When asked about his reinterpretations of classics like “Eleanor Rigby” and “The Sound of Silence,” which he seems to weave short film soundtracks out of, scoring the narrative world suggested by the lyrics, he said he’s doing exactly that. Canonical pop is up for cinematic reinterpretation, but of course “it doesn’t work for every song. Those two have lyrics that avail themselves to scoring. They have a story, there’s this mystery going on … it’s really fascinating.”

Fry describes his first Grammy nomination for “Rigby” as “the most shocking moment of my career.” Though reared by musician dad Gary (an orchestral arranger who soared in the jingle business, no less), there is a real sense of humility and wonder at the kind of success that’s sprung up around him. His second Grammy nomination for “The Sound of Silence,” in collaboration with beloved Illinois musical entity Sleeping at Last, left him even more incredulous (the indie band will join Fry at The Kennedy Center in February). He believed, partly due to his father’s example, that he could get by and have a career as a musician, but he never felt he was on his way to anything like this. Such are the spasmodic ascents of pop, and Cody’s credentials make him something far from a fuddy-duddy or languorous cover artist.

And really, the covers are “palate cleansers” between writing original songs such as “I Hear a Symphony.” Fry’s response to my question — What does it mean, to be able to “hear a symphony” in today’s world, where that kind of layered scope and romantic daring is far from a cultural given? — seemed at odds with the simplistic notions often held about what it truly means to share a life with someone (in another word, love). Though his response is incredibly gentle, I in my endless criticality can’t help reading it as a kind of rebuke to some of the expectations of the very tik-tokers whose weepy edits made viral, five years later, this delicate song from 2017. Cody says: “As love grows it becomes more complicated, and more beautiful in the complications.” A lot of people are looking for pop songs, but he knows what it is to be in it for the symphony. He’s been married over ten years to Haley, and the single voice which starts the song marks the early meetings between lovers, the ease and seeming smoothness of the start. Then, “as love expands and continues, and you get to know each other more and more, and you see all the little eccentricities, and dissonances, those are what make it something extraordinary, and by the end of it you’re hearing this symphony.” Well, Sir, if that’s not wisdom for us all.

If you watch Cody’s work online, you’ll see him conducting. Though he offers the disclaimer that he’s never conducted professionally “in the concert hall,” he demonstrates real reverence and understanding for the conductor’s role in music, more unique insight he brings to his career which merges the taut and sleek sensibilities of pop with symphonic size and thematic aspiration.

As for what to expect at Disney Hall on the 10th, Cody reminds us that when bands or artists use orchestras it’s often a matter of gluing the latter onto the former’s ingrained sound, so that the orchestra is never really showcased, as the band or artist is just gonna do their thing. Cody on the other hand wrote the show you’ll see on the 10th from the ground up in order to showcase the excellence of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, and “to remind people how powerful it can be when you have 70 people in the same room making the same piece of art at the same time.” The evening will be conducted by Scott Dunn, whose own orchestra will celebrate The Second Golden Age of Film Scoring at The Wallis in Beverly Hills on January 18th.

With this refined respect for the symphonic hall, and his love of movies, including Golden-Age MGM musicals, this town is bound to welcome his romantic adventures and “maximum-cinematic” sound. There’s something Hollywood about his very arrival; he knows how amazing it is to be at Disney Hall for his first show in Los Angeles. It is like a dream-interlude from some ‘50s musical, replete with flourishes and French horns that Cody might appreciate. For Cody the Golden-Age is now, and he himself will make you agree.

photos courtesy of the artist