Review: CHAIN OF LOVE (A BROADWAY ALBUM) Release Party And Concert With Carly Ozard And Friends

CHAIN OF LOVE (A Broadway Album) 
ALBUM RELEASE PARTY and CONCERT 
with Carly Ozard and FRIENDS 

GRNHS Gallery + Studio  

18 August 2025

Carly Ozard, a non-binary bicoastal entertainer, performed a sold-out concert in support of her newly dropped CD “Chain of Love,” a tribute to her deep love of Broadway showtunes. A veteran of San Francisco’s 42nd Street Moon and Lamplighters Music Theatre, Ozard is a big belter, with both a husky contralto and an operatic soprano which she utilizes easily. The music from the CD features tunes from composers including Kander and Ebb, Stephen Sondheim, Jerry Herman, Irving Berlin, and Charles Strouse, some well-known, others seldom heard.

Engaging a quartet of Baker Peeples on piano, Daniel Fabricant on bass, Jerry Herrera on percussion, and Baker Peeples II on violin, Ozard provided very personal pre-song setups - each number being a link in a chain, a form of six-degrees of separation in meaning and history. Opening with Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Cockeyed Optimist” from South Pacific, Carly segued into a mashup of “Children of the Wind” from Rags (Stephen Schwartz and Charles Strouse) with “Waving Through a Window” from Dear Evan Hansen (Benj Pasek and Justin Paul), the former in the soprano range, the latter in her wheelhouse contralto.

“Love Changes Everything” (music Andrew Lloyd Webber, lyrics Don Black & Charles Hart) from Aspects of Love and a duet on Sweeney Todd’s “Little Priest” with baritone Charles Martin were delightful. The lovely ballad “Unusual Way” (Maury Yeston) from Nine and Howard Ashman and Alan Mencken’s “Daughter of God” showed Ozard’s softer side. From the little-known Irving Berlin musical Miss Liberty came the humorous “Falling Out of Love Can Be Fun” and a smart arrangement morphing the rhythm of “Don’t Rain on My Parade” with the lyrics from “Before the Parade Passes By.”

Ozard is an open book and shared a disturbing story about being body shamed recently which triggered a childhood memory of being forced to play The Beast and never the Beauty. To take back her power, Ozard launched into a searing authentic and moving cover of “If I Can’t Love Her” (music by Alan Menken, lyrics by Howard Ashman and Tim Rice from Beauty and the Beast. Ozard closed the evening with the tile track from her new CD Chain of Love (lyrics by Kenward Elmslie and music by Clabe Richardson), a song from the failed musical based on Truman Capote’s Grass Harp. Romantically optimistic, Ozard hits a sweet note singing: If love is a chain of love, As nature is a chain of life, A chain that will always endure, Then I'll always be in love.”                      

Photo credits: Gooch, Dirty Sugar