By Debbie Gardner
debbieg@thereminder.com
It’s probably the Valley’s best-kept anti-aging secret.
But in the beginning, no one dreamed it would be like this.
“When we started, we had no thought about what would be its future. It was very much in the present, we just wanted to get people together to sing to break up the tedium at the [Walter Salvo House] meal site,” Bob Cilman, longtime producer for the Young@Heart Chorus told Prime during a recent chat about the group’s 35th anniversary season.
What began as a handful of people around a piano somehow blossomed into a powerhouse performing group, one that’s been featured in a 2006 documentary that showed on PBS and in theaters internationally, been invited to appear on TV shows like Jay Leno and Ellen DeGeneres, and played to packed houses across Europe, Japan, Singapore and Australia.
Not a single member of the chorus is younger than 73 years old. This season, the oldest performer is closing in on 90.
“I’m just as excited and enthusiastic as I was when I joined the group,” said Bill Arnold, 75, who have been playing the drums for the Young @ Heart band around the world for the past 15 years “I’m learning something new, and it’s keeping me young.”
From elders to superstars
According to Cilman, the chorus that became Young@Heart nearly folded right out of the gate.
“Our first performance was at the Southern Congregational Church,” he recalled, adding the audience was elders, like the performers. “We couldn’t sing very well, and they seemed pretty bored.”
The saving grace that day, he said, was the comedy of 80-year old Anna Main.
“She went on for about 20 minutes and she had them rolling in the aisles.” At that moment Cilman realized, “This is where we need to go.”
Their next show, “Stompin’ the Salvo,” was a true stage production crafted with the help of Northampton’s No Theater director Roy Faudree. “That sort of got our name out there and it was really helpful in picking up some new and exciting performers” – namely R. Warren Clark, know for his impersonations of Sophie Tucker, Ralph Intorcio, who did impersonations of Carol Channing and Carmine Miranda, and Brit expat Eileen Hall, who did great vaudeville acts.
From that point on the chorus thrived on collaboration. Young @ Heart has worked with everyone – from a group of eight to 10-year old break dancers back in 1984, which Cilman called a “real clash of cultures … break dancers were dancing to old people’s music” – to the 1991 “Flaming Saddles” show with the Pioneer Valley Gay Men’s Chorus to multiple shows with the No Theater – including a 1996 sold-out European tour – to recent concerts with the Brooklyn Youth Chorus and Springfield’s renown Sci Tec Band.
In 35 seasons, they’ve crisscrossed America, and the world.
“We’re ambassadors for this country, whether on not they say we are,” said Arnold, who also counts gigs and tours with Motown, the Army Band, Wilson Pickett and many others in his long musical career. “Not just for this country, but for older people, that there is life after 50, 60, 70, 80.”
Not your grandmother’s music
When Young @Heart started in 1982, Cilman said most of the members were from the era “between World War I and world War II,” and their shows reflected their generation. Now Cilman said most members come from the time period “around the Korean War,” and their repertoire is much more contemporary.
For Young @ Heart’s 30th anniversary tour in 2012, for example, the program lists songs ranging from “Auld Lang Syne/Give Peace a Chance” by John Lennon to “Come as You Are” by Nirvana to “Dancin’ in the Dark” by Bruce Springsteen to “No Woman, No Cry” by Bob Marley – with plenty of other pop and rock anthems in between.
“My sons could not believe the music we were singing because it was their music,” said Shirley Stevens, who joined Young @ Heart nine years ago at age 73. “The type of music we do, it’s mind-boggling to the young people.”
In fact it was the chance to take on a pop song – Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror” – that enticed 82-year-old John Rinehart to join Young @Heart back in 2010. But it wasn’t love at first note.
According to Rinehart, a chance encounter with a friend, Joe Mitchell, who was with Young @ Heart at the time, that convinced him to try out.
When he arrived at rehearsals, the group was singing a song he didn’t know and Rinehart recalled he “wasn’t very impressed.”
Cilman however, saw something in Rinehart, and encouraged Mitchell to reach out and try to get the singer back to rehearsal.
“I thought, ‘why is he calling me?’” Rinehart said of Mitchell’s persistence, but he acquiesced and met with Cilman again.
“Bob shook my hand and asked me to learn a song.” Rinehart said. He’s been a soloist with Young @ Heart ever since.
“Bob has a unique ability to know us by our voice, and fit us to a song,” said Steve Martin, who has been with Young @ Heart for 17 years.
The secret to that fit, Martin said, is that Cilman gives the performers the words to learn, not necessarily the music. Young@Heart puts its own stamp on every song.
“Sometimes, some of the stuff they do I think, ‘Wow, young people couldn’t go through this and learn the songs and rehearse like we do’,” said Arnold.
The appeal of Young@Heart is proof positive music is universal.
“Music doesn’t have an age. They don’t think of us as octogenarians [up on stage], they think of us as a chorus” Martin said.
That, and “We have the best damn director in the world,” and a fabulous band, said Stevens.
Age is truly just a number
Cilman noted that once they join, Young@Heart members stay with the chorus for years – bowing out only when health concerns make the twice-weekly two-hour practices – or the touring – too difficult to manage. He’s had chorus members stay well into their late 80s and 90s. Anna Main – the comedian that saved the chorus’ first show and fostered the group’s unique performing style, was with Young@Heart until she turned 100.
Martin said he wished Young@Heart would get more local attention not only as a performing group, but also as a role model for positive aging.
“I’ve always felt that the chorus should play a much bigger role, to portray an image of what aging could be if [elders] let it,” Martin told Prime. “To prove to people that, as they age, they can feel good about themselves, if they let themselves.”
Rinehart said that positive energy all comes from the group.
“A lot of it has to do with the people. We’re all at an age where we’ve raised our children and bought out homes. It’s a relaxed atmosphere – no one has anything to prove anymore, no one is trying to outdo someone else. It’s something that we all love to do,” he said. “We’re very close, almost like a second family.”
Rinehart added his favorite song to perform is “Forever Young” by Bob Dylan.
“In our society – when you get older here – they want to put you in a corner and say your life is over,” Arnold said. “The chorus makes you feel like you’re worth something.
“I think everybody should have a chance – whether they sing or not – to come and try [what we do]. It’s healthy spiritually, and mentally,” he said.
In addition to their concert schedule, members of Young@Heart participate in a program working with inmate choruses in local prisons.
Catch them live!
The Young@Heart Chorus will perform in an outdoor concert on June 29 at the Florence Civic Center as part of the summer “Music on the Porch’ series.
Young@Heart will perform a full concert Nov. 19 in Worcester.
For more information about upcoming performances, or the chorus, visit http://www.youngatheartchorus.com or check out the group’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/youngatheartchorus/
