It’s impossible for Cody Fry to narrow down the reasons why he loves music.
“There are so many things . . . it’s the thing that I do that makes me lose track of time. It’s the thing that I do that puts me into a flow state. It’s like therapy or something. I don’t think there’s anybody out there that loves it more than I do,” says two-time Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter and composer Cody Fry, who is performing with the Richmond Symphony on September 13 at 7:30 p.m. at Altria Theater.
Fry, who American Idol fans will recognize as a top 48 contender on the 14th season of the popular show, has released seven solo albums and has more than 300 million streams across multiple platforms. His music combines the drama of film scores with the heart of pop storytelling.
His father, a jingle writer, was his entryway into music. “Some of that involved having me and my sisters sing on a lot of these kids’ commercials that he was writing music for, so I grew up singing on McDonald’s commercials and tons of other television and radio commercials,” says Fry. “My father is probably the most influential person on me musically. The impact he’s had on me can’t be overstated.”
When Fry was older, his father transitioned to writing for orchestras. He worked with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to create their holiday shows.
“Watching him navigate his career, that was the type of lesson that you can’t really teach in a book. I feel like I won the lottery, being able to watch my dad make a career in music and in the jingle phase of his career, watching him learn how to navigate client relationships.”
Fry didn’t pick up the guitar until he was in high school, but he began piano lessons when he was young. He didn’t get serious about his music until high school.
That passion intensified when he moved to Nashville to attend Belmont University, graduating in 2012 with a degree in commercial music.
“As soon as I got on the campus, I thought this is a really amazing place with so many different types of music being pursued,” Fry says, adding he found a group of people involved in the same genre of music as him. “That was really exciting, so I moved to Nashville for college, and I’ve stayed ever since.”
Fry has always loved orchestral music and also music for films. “It was always my dream to be able to play with orchestras. I never thought it would be accessible to me,” he says.
That avenue opened up when his song “I Hear a Symphony” went viral on TikTok and his album “Symphony Sessions,” which included his orchestral cover of The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby,” was released. Since then, he has appeared with multiple orchestras, including the Chicago Orchestra, the Boston Pops, the Pacific Symphony and the Dallas Symphony.
“Orchestras began to reach out and say, hey what’s going on here? Why don’t you play with our orchestra,” he recalls.
He describes playing with orchestras as “unbelievably powerful.”
“So much of what I love about the orchestra is that it’s all happening right in front of you, there are no tricks. You come to hear the music. The music is the magic trick,” he says. “It’s so enjoyable to watch my fans – a lot of whom have never been to the orchestra before – come and see this thing happen in real time. I just love that feeling of getting to show new people what it’s like to hear an orchestra perform something exhilarating.”
When he’s writing music, he likes to highlight orchestral instruments that wouldn’t necessarily be heard in singer/songwriter pop music. “I want to create music that uses that instrument in a way audiences think is cool,” he says.
He believes music has a biological connection to people’s inner being. “It’s wild how it can just cut through,” he says. “The world is filled with songs that you can hear 1000 times and then forget as soon as you stop hearing them and my goal is to make the song that someone can hear one time and never forget.”
While he’s never been to Richmond, Fry says he’s heard the “Richmond Symphony is great. When they asked to have me come play with them, I was like ‘that’s an easy yes!’”
Tickets for the concert are available on the Richmond Symphony website.
