Cody Fry’s Sym­phony Ses­sions

MISHAWAKA--Cody Fry’s new re­lease on Jan. 21 is one which fea­tures an or­ches­tra back­ing Fry’s and Ben Rec­tor’s voices. It was re­leased as an al­bum, al­though it only con­sists of seven songs and 23 min­utes in run­time. Tra­di­tion­ally, al­bums need to have 30 min­utes of con­tent or ten songs on the record, but in this case there is enough con­tent in those 23 min­utes to con­sti­tute an al­bum or two. 

Cody Fry has been flirt­ing with writ­ing with or­ches­tras ever since his vi­ral song, “I Hear a Sym­phony,” and his live con­cert al­bum with Cory Wong and the Metro­pole Ork­est called “Live in Am­s­ter­dam,” re­leased on Nov. 17, 2017, and April 3, 2020, re­spec­tively. 

Here is where I get into a lit­tle more of an opin­ion. For each of the songs, I am go­ing to break­down what is go­ing on mu­si­cally in my pseudo-mu­sic speak.

“Caves” - This is a star-wars in­spired piece, which sets up the song fol­low­ing it. When I hear it, I think of the rev­er­ence that comes along with the un­known of a cave.

“Un­der­ground” - It starts with Cody Fry and his gui­tar, and as he finds out more about where he is the or­ches­tra comes in and the world be­comes more tan­gi­ble to the speaker. 

“Eleanor Rigby” - Al­though I be­lieve this song has been cov­ered by way too many artists, this ver­sion breathes life into a song that is con­sid­ered stale in more re­cent years. 

“Sail­boat” - Heavy tex­tures of strings give a foun­da­tion to the vo­cal har­monies of Ben Rec­tor and Cody Fry.

“More Than the Day Be­fore” - The falsetto of Cody Fry along with the flutes and pi­ano speaks to how care­fully this song was con­structed to give emo­tions with each word he is singing, es­pe­cially in the sec­tion where he de­scribes not be­liev­ing in what he said. The strings change in their reg­is­ter and pro­vide a con­trast­ing tone to the rest of the piece.

“I Hear a Sym­phony” - This is a live ver­sion of the piece that made his or­ches­tra arrange­ments pop­u­lar. There is a rea­son it be­came vi­ral; it is pow­er­ful.

“Pho­to­graph” - Start­ing the same way he starts many of his pieces in this col­lec­tion, he plays the pi­ano, and the or­ches­tra slowly and care­fully finds its way to pro­vide the tex­ture to his mo­ments and emo­tions.

Over­all, I en­joyed this al­bum, and the or­ches­tra pushes these songs into a mem­o­rable cat­e­gory, wherein I will be lis­ten­ing to these songs re­peat­edly for days and weeks and months to come. This al­bum is avail­able on many mu­sic plat­forms as well as in video form on YouTube at Sym­phony Ses­sions (Full Per­for­mance) - Cody Fry.