Music for Grownups: "Young@Heart"
By: Richard Gehr | Source: AARP.org | Date Posted: 2008-04-09
Richard Gehr is a veteran music critic based in New York City.
When Bob Cilman and some residents of a Massachusetts housing project formed Young@Heart in 1982, the chorus's material tended toward such age-appropriate fare as "Yes, We Have No Bananas."
How times have changed.
"Young@Heart," a poignant, inspiring, and at times utterly rambunctious new documentary about the 26-member group, opened in theaters April 8. The film documents a seven-week period during 2006 when the chorus of singers in their seventies, eighties, and even nineties, rehearsed seven new songs in preparation for the emotion-drenched performance that predictably concludes the show. The chorus is filmed struggling to learn new material by James Brown, Prince, and New York noise-rockers Sonic Youth for a theater performance in Northampton, Mass., their hometown. One singer never quite gets a handle on Brown's "I Feel Good (I've Got You)," which becomes a running joke. The results aren't always pretty, but the group's enthusiasm and dedication is relentless.
The British filmmakers also capture chorus members discussing aging, sex, and death with unusual frankness. Bob Cilman, 53 years old at the time of filming, turns out to be a surprisingly stern yet fundamentally compassionate taskmaster. He takes his role seriously and expects his talented amateurs to do the same. The at-first laughable notion of oldsters performing young folks' music dissipates almost immediately. Everyone acts his or her age.
Cilman tries to choose material that resonates with the group, which has toured both nationally and internationally. A performance of Bob Dylan's "Forever Young" at a local prison leaves several convicts in tears. David Bowie's "Golden Years" and Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark"—with its lyric, "I ain't nothin' but tired"—reveal poignant new layers of meaning when sung by someone actually tired and in his golden years. Indeed, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what the Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want" had to offer until I saw Young@Heart bookend their first New York City show with the number last year.
As Young@Heart has grown close during their thrice-weekly rehearsals, the deaths of not one, but two, members during the course of filming can't help but affect this tightly knit community. Charismatic Fred Knittle, 81, sings British pop group Coldplay's "Fix You" (with its lines, "tears stream down your face/When you lose something you cannot replace") as a solo, rather than accompanied by his friend, Bob Salvini, who died a week before their big show. To call that performance "moving" would be an understatement. Another singer, Joe Benoit, succumbs to cancer over the course of a few days. Having lost numerous members during their quarter-century together, the chorus takes a quick break to memorialize their colleagues before going on with their work. What else can they do?
"Young@Heart" also includes four relatively elaborate numbers filmed as music videos, although much less flippant than most. Before now, when could you ever see someone performing a sexy "Stayin' Alive" while connected to his own operating oxygen tank? While Young@Heart radiates plenty of happiness, dedication, and professionalism onstage, it's really the rehearsal process, when they grapple with the new and unfamiliar, that brings out the best they have to offer. In that respect, "Young@Heart" is almost an instructional manual in growing old gracefully.
How times have changed.
"Young@Heart," a poignant, inspiring, and at times utterly rambunctious new documentary about the 26-member group, opened in theaters April 8. The film documents a seven-week period during 2006 when the chorus of singers in their seventies, eighties, and even nineties, rehearsed seven new songs in preparation for the emotion-drenched performance that predictably concludes the show. The chorus is filmed struggling to learn new material by James Brown, Prince, and New York noise-rockers Sonic Youth for a theater performance in Northampton, Mass., their hometown. One singer never quite gets a handle on Brown's "I Feel Good (I've Got You)," which becomes a running joke. The results aren't always pretty, but the group's enthusiasm and dedication is relentless.
The British filmmakers also capture chorus members discussing aging, sex, and death with unusual frankness. Bob Cilman, 53 years old at the time of filming, turns out to be a surprisingly stern yet fundamentally compassionate taskmaster. He takes his role seriously and expects his talented amateurs to do the same. The at-first laughable notion of oldsters performing young folks' music dissipates almost immediately. Everyone acts his or her age.
Cilman tries to choose material that resonates with the group, which has toured both nationally and internationally. A performance of Bob Dylan's "Forever Young" at a local prison leaves several convicts in tears. David Bowie's "Golden Years" and Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark"—with its lyric, "I ain't nothin' but tired"—reveal poignant new layers of meaning when sung by someone actually tired and in his golden years. Indeed, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what the Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want" had to offer until I saw Young@Heart bookend their first New York City show with the number last year.
As Young@Heart has grown close during their thrice-weekly rehearsals, the deaths of not one, but two, members during the course of filming can't help but affect this tightly knit community. Charismatic Fred Knittle, 81, sings British pop group Coldplay's "Fix You" (with its lines, "tears stream down your face/When you lose something you cannot replace") as a solo, rather than accompanied by his friend, Bob Salvini, who died a week before their big show. To call that performance "moving" would be an understatement. Another singer, Joe Benoit, succumbs to cancer over the course of a few days. Having lost numerous members during their quarter-century together, the chorus takes a quick break to memorialize their colleagues before going on with their work. What else can they do?
"Young@Heart" also includes four relatively elaborate numbers filmed as music videos, although much less flippant than most. Before now, when could you ever see someone performing a sexy "Stayin' Alive" while connected to his own operating oxygen tank? While Young@Heart radiates plenty of happiness, dedication, and professionalism onstage, it's really the rehearsal process, when they grapple with the new and unfamiliar, that brings out the best they have to offer. In that respect, "Young@Heart" is almost an instructional manual in growing old gracefully.
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