History of the Young@Heart Chorus

When the Young@ Heart (Y@H) began in 1982 the members all lived in an elderly housing project in Northampton, Massachusetts, called the Walter Salvo House. Bob Cilman, the director of meals at the Salvo was approached by Judith Sharpe, a piano player, to form a chorus.

The first group included elders who had lived through both World Wars. One of the members had fought in the Battle of the Somme (1916) as a 16 year old and another, Anna Main, lost her husband in the First World War. Anna was a stand-up comic who at the age of 88 told jokes that only she could get away with. She sang with Y@H until she was 100. Her 100th birthday was about to be celebrated with a parade downtown when it was discovered at the last moment that she was actually only 99! But she lived to have the parade a year later. Initially the Young@Heart focused on songs from the memories of the elders in the group. The early group sang songs like ‘Sweet Sue’, ‘When I Grow too Old to Dream’ and ‘Juanita’. But Bob Cilman was always curious to hear the kind of songs he grew up with. A couple years after the group formed, Josephine Tylenda, a Polish born chorus member, did a unique interpretation of the Beatles ‘Let it Be’, sung half in Polish and half in English. It had a profound effect on people who had grown up with the song. Another chorus member, Diamond Lillian Aubrey, then learned "Doo Wah Diddy" for an AIDS benefit in 1986. Her deadpan version of the song wowed audiences everywhere, as did her later performance ‘on stage’ via video of the Stones song ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’. This sparked even greater exploration of more "contemporary" music.

By 1983 the original group was ready to create their first stage production. They enlisted the support of Roy Faudree from No Theater to stage ‘Stompin’ At The Salvo’. No Theater was doing the most intriguing experimental theater work in town. That first production was memorable for the sensation and buzz it created. The show sold out four times and brought in a broad cross section of younger and older people from the community. It also brought in new performers. In early 1984 Eileen Hall, Warren Clark, and Ralph Intorcio joined the group. Warren and Ralph were both very good at doing female impersonations. Warren took on the persona of Sophie Tucker, a popular vaudevillian stage performer, and Ralph did a send-up of Carol Channing’s ‘Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend’. Eileen, who appears in the documentary as the oldest member of the chorus, was born and raised in London and brought us an array of different routines, including strip, mime and her song ‘Nobody Loves a Fairy When She’s ...Ninety’. We decided to combine these performances with a group of Latino break-dancers from another local housing project. The result was a show called ‘Boola Boola Bimini Bop’. These early shows were the first of many collaborations with different arts groups in town. A few others included ‘Oh No a Condo’ in 1988, which combined Cambodian folk artists and punk rockers, and ‘Louis Lou I – A Revolting Musical’ (1991), which reunited us with Roy and No Theater for a huge production (over 100 people involved). The piece was a re-telling of the French Revolution using the songs of Sinatra.

In 1994 we created ‘Flaming Saddles’, a big campy production with the Pioneer Valley Gay Men’s Chorus. And there were many other shows along the way. In 1996 No Theater was in Rotterdam performing in the annual “R Festival”. Roy asked the organizers about the theme for the next year’s festival. When he discovered it was ‘Forever Young’, he told the organizers about Young@Heart and plans were formed to bring the group over to Europe for the first time. This was also the first time Y@H would create a stage production which only included members of the chorus. Mixing songs and costumes from past shows with some new music, ‘Road to Heaven’, staged by No Theater, was created. The response to ‘Road to Heaven’ was phenomenal and the chorus went on to 12 more tours of Europe, Australia and Canada from 1997-2004. We also performed ‘Road to Heaven’ at the Lyric Hammersmith in November 2000 with the support of the London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT). It was in London that the groundwork was laid for a new show with Young@Heart called ‘Road to Nowhere’, also staged by No Theater. A consortium of presenters commissioned the new work including LIFT, The Rotterdamse Schouwburg, The Hebbel Theater in Berlin, and Brugge 2002. The new show premiered in fall 2004 in the Oude Luxor Theater in Rotterdam presented by the Rotterdamse Schouwburg. After a 12-show run in London in 2005, ‘Road to Nowhere’ toured Zurich, Berlin, the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival 2007, Le Quai Theatre in Angers and The National Theatre of Strasbourg, France. The Y@H is currently in rehearsals for the last in the trilogy of “road” shows with No Theatre, which will premier in July 2009. ‘Alive and Well’, the Y@H in concert (which is featured in the documentary), includes songs from past productions and also allows the group to experiment with new music in front of a live audience. We’ve performed ‘Alive and Well’ on college campuses and clubs in the US and at the Glor-Irish Music Centre in Ennis, Ireland and the Wilshire Theater in Hollywood.

The Summer 2008 Tour included the Capitol Theatre in Salt Lake City; the Somerville Theatre in Somerville, Massachusetts, the Beacon Theatre in New York City and the Academy of Music Theatre in Northampton. In August 2008 Y@H performed at the Newport Folk Festival. Young @ Heart released the CD, ‘Mostly Live’ in August 2007. The CD was re-released in the US by Rhino Records in August 2008. The Walker George Films production, ‘Young @ Heart’, was released by Fox Searchlight in North American theaters in April 2008. It has won two Rose d’Or awards, the Los Angeles Film Festival Audience Award, the Atlanta Film Festival Audience Award, the Sydney Film Festival Audience Award for Best Documentary, and the Audience and Jury Awards at the Paris Cinema International Film Festival. The movie is scheduled for release in cinemas outside North America from Fall 2008. The Soundtrack for the film has already been released digitally by Rhino Records in the US. Rhino will also be releasing a compilation CD of 'Mostly Live' and the film soundtrack to complement the film. The current performers in Young@Heart range in age from 73 to 89. There are some with prior professional theater or music experience, others who have performed extensively on the amateur level, and some who never stepped onto a stage before turning eighty. None of the current performers of Y@H were part of the original group that formed in 1982, but they have kept alive the spirit of the early pioneers and continue to push the group into glorious new directions.