- Directing the Y@H Chorus is just one way Bob Cilman, seen here with chorus member Eileen Hall, fosters the arts. As executive director of the Northampton Arts Council, his duties include overseeing the awarding of arts grants and staging fund-raisers like “Four Sundays in February,” which lights up the gloomiest stretch of winter with entertainment. In summer, “Transperformance” features local musicians and celebs like the mayor impersonating rock stars; The Y@H Chorus were the Velvet Underground last year.
Nearly 25 years ago, Bob Cilman ’79 found inspiration in a most unlikely source: a lunch at a senior center of “typical government issue” food, in his words. His idea was to form a chorus composed of the group of old people he was eating with. Six months later, the Young @ Heart Chorus (Y@H) performed its first show, “Stompin’ at the Salvo.”
Six months after that, the chorus went on tour to Rotterdam. Cilman still voices surprise that “people were willing to pay for our flights,” but those early supporters were on to something: That show, “Road to Heaven” was “an instant sensation,” says Cilman. “We had 90 people the first night. The next night, through word of mouth, we sold out—250 seats.”
They sold out all 12 shows, in fact; and the next year, all the performances were sold out in advance. Since then, they’ve performed in Berlin, Brussels, Zurich . . . even, as the old saying goes, before the “Crowned Heads of Europe.” In Bergen, Norway, King Harald V and Queen Sonja came to a show. At a reception afterward, His Royal Majesty confided to Cilman that he preferred Y@H’s cover of “Take on Me” to the original by Norwegian band a-ha.
Kings aren’t the only ones who warm to the chorus. CBS, Time magazine, even the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, have done stories on the chorus. Last spring, Bluebird Film Productions, Ltd., was shooting a documentary on the chorus for Britain’s Channel 4. Y@H’s London tour in fall 2005 (11 days, 12 shows) won raves from critics. International Herald Tribune: “Those wanting something truly fantastic should race to ‘Road to Nowhere’.” Mail on Sunday: “This is the most moving gig of the year.” The Daily Telegraph: “It is quite obvious that the performers are having the time of their lives.”
If some reviewers also seem compelled to describe the shows “as much more than a geriatric novelty act,” chalk it up to the “Waiting for Guffman” syndrome—the tendency to brace oneself for some hokey amateur hour because the performers are from a small town and, more to the point, gray-haired. But gray-haired, white-haired, or no-haired, the chorus members are professionals.
Even when they’re rehearsing, they take their performing seriously. Well, most of the time. On a chilly day at the Florence Civic Center, 93-year-old London-born Eileen Hall, in a sweater with roses around its hem, starts things off by telling a racy joke. It involves a husband, a wife, a lover, a closet, moths, and a punchline about “those little bastards,” and she delivers it in a sly, masterfully droll way. Then Dora B. (Parker) Morrow, wearing a lime-green watch cap, draws up her skinny frame and brings out a raw, bluesy bellow, “I Feeeeeel Good!” In a voice that’s controlled but full of feeling, Jean Hatch sings “Please Send Me Someone to Love.”
The terrific solos notwithstanding, the Y@H is first and foremost an ensemble, and Cilman nudges the group through their numbers with humor, affection, praise, and the occasional, “That sounded really weird.” When asked about where they’re performing tomorrow, he jokes, “How big’s the stage? Let’s say it’s this size, and then it will be either bigger or smaller.” At various points, he conducts, sings along, claps, dances, and just rocks out. The energy is irresistible, and musicians on piano, drums, and guitar provide lively backup as they work through a killer repertoire that includes Sonic Youth’s “Schizophrenia” and “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” by the Clash.
In their shows, the “lump-in-the-throat moments” that the chorus elicits come from more than their winning musicianship and the artful arrangements and staging. Songs like Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” take on a whole new meaning and emotional dimension when the chorus performs them. Who knew all those sixties hits were really about time’s passage, mortality, and keeping intact your dignity when the rest of you starts to fall apart? The Y@H members provoke deep feeling because their music comes from a core of feeling. And determination. Says Cilman, “These people struggle to stay alive and to keep doing it.” (Last spring, two members, Joe Benoit and Bob Salvini, died just days before a scheduled performance, but the show went on.)
Over the years, the chorus has teamed up at times with break-dancers, a gay men’s chorus, and the rock band Drunk Stuntmen. Fearlessly, Cilman books the chorus before audiences that seasoned performers might shy from: before inmates at the county jail, a crowd of musicians in a nightclub—and high school students.
“It was always an arts project, not a social services project; there’s nothing ‘sweet’ about it,” says Cilman. Nothing “Broadway, buy me,” in his words, either. Some members have sung and acted professionally. Many have not. Cilman nurtures everyone’s willingness to give it one’s all, in an unaffected way, to bring forth “simple theater that has the audience at the edge of their seats."
