Bay Area singer Carly Ozard is cementing a lifelong interest in musical theater in all its wild variety with a new recording called “Chain of Love (A Broadway Album),” a showcase of mostly little-known show tunes.
Slated to perform at a CD release party in a South of Market San Francisco gallery on Aug. 18, Ozard says, “I burst into tears three times during rehearsal yesterday because it was so beautiful live. I couldn’t believe it.”
While some of the 16 songs are from famous shows like “Sweeney Todd,” “Hello, Dolly!” and “South Pacific,” others are from notable flops, including “Rags” and “The Grass Harp.”
“They’re songs I love to sing,” says Ozard, noting that they were chosen not only for compelling music and lyrics, but for “what they represent, who they support and the stories that they tell.”
The album also “celebrates collaborations by composers that a lot of people don’t know work together,” adds Ozard, 41, a contralto whose voice fully developed around age 34. For example, “Children of the Wind” and “Wanting” from “Rags” were written by the team of Charles Strouse (“Annie,” “Bye, Bye Birdie”) and Stephen Schwartz (“Pippin,” Wicked”).
The CD’s title tune from “The Grass Harp” is of particular significance to Ozard, who learned about it from the late Jay Binder, a prominent New York casting director instrumental in their career (“he kept bringing me in for stuff”) and Greg MacKellan, cofounder of the San Francisco troupe 42nd Street Moon, which specializes in presenting “lost” musicals.
Binder, who taught courses in which he selected repertory for students that they wouldn’t necessarily audition for, introduced “Chain of Love” to a soprano, Ozard says: “The whole class fell in love with it. The song kind of united all of us. All the people in the class are links in the chain because we’re all there, like, trying to be on Broadway or trying to be stars or trying to be whatever we’re trying to be. We’re all showing up.”
Responding to a query about dream roles, Ozard mentions “all the broads”: Madame Thénardier in “Les Misérables”; Dolly Levi in “Hello, Dolly!” and Mama Rose in “Gypsy.” But while Ozard once had the goal of being on Broadway—knowing it would take years to get there, being big, nonbinary and a “non-traditional choice”—today the aim is something else: “to be a “working actor and entertainer for the rest of my life.”
For the past five years, Ozard has appeared with San Francisco’s Lamplighters, which has been staging Gilbert & Sullivan operettas and similar works for decades.
“It’s been wonderful. I love it. I hope they’ll have me back again. My goal is to take the Gilbert & Sullivan resume that I’ve built up for myself and try to get cast in England, New Zealand and Australia in various Gilbert & Sullivan productions, so I can travel and see all my friends who live over there.”
Ozard, whose longtime obsession with musicals was fueled by checking out CDs from the Belmont Public Library as well as regular visits to the nearby Blockbuster Video and Tower Records, started voice lessons as a youngster. The San Mateo High School graduate also appeared multiple times in Notre Dame de Namur University’s holiday musical “The Gift,” based on Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.”
“We were a huge family,” Ozard says.
At next week’s CD release performance, Ozard will be joined by vocalist friends for duos and trios, as well as a band with “some of the best musicians in the world” that play on the recording: pianist Baker Peeples, longtime Lamplighters’ maestro; his son Baker Peeples II on violin, Daniel Fabricant on bass and Jerry Herrera on cajon, a Peruvian percussion instrument.
Beyond the release of “Chain of Love,” Ozard is excited about other musical projects in the works.
One is a return to “The Ethel Merman Disco Album.” Ozard, who wowed a New York cabaret audience with a live rendition of “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” a tune on the campy 1979 record, has been invited back to the Green Room 42 to do a show with more of its tunes.
Also a songwriter and electronic dance music purveyor, Ozard is releasing original music on the independent label Pink Frenchie Productions. Working with Leo Frappier, who produced “Chain of Love” for Pink Frenchie, Ozard has two upcoming song releases. One is slightly profane; the other is a “1920s techno swing ditty” with scatting and “improvised stuff all over it.”
Called “Elevator Girl,” it’s about the elevator at the Regency Ballroom. Ozard says, “It’s the oldest elevator in San Francisco and you have to have somebody operate it. That was my job for two years.”
Carly Ozard’s “Chains of Love (A Broadway Album)” CD release party is at 7:30 p.m. Aug. 18 at GRNHS Gallery + Studio, 864 Folsom St., San Francisco. Suggested donation is $20 at eventbrite.com.
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