Every Friday morning, Bob Cilman wakes up at 5:30 a.m. to drive to West Haven, Connecticut, to take a Metro North train to New York City — and after lunch, he comes right back.
Cilman, director of the Northampton-based age-75-and-up vocal performance group Young@Heart (Y@H), travels to New York City not for leisure, but to lead the organization’s first satellite chapter. Later this month, the original chorus and its newest counterpart will unite for an unprecedented joint performance in Northampton.
Both chapters will take center stage at the Academy of Music in Northampton on Sunday, April 26 at 3 p.m. During the show, the Northampton group will perform songs related to or written in New York City, and the New York City group will perform a variety of songs, including those by Stevie Wonder, Jelly Roll, Joan Armatrading, Richard Hell and the Voidoids and more. One highlight of the afternoon will be when both chapters perform an eight-song set together.
“I know that everyone is looking forward to see[ing] what is going to happen, because this could be the senior chorus battle of the century, and it also could be the greatest senior chorus tag team meeting in all of history. So which will it become?” said Wayne Brachman, a member of the New York City chapter who joked that he has “dual citizenship between New York City and Northampton.”
Brachman, a chef and former Food Network host, was the chairman of the Northampton Arts Council when Y@H was founded in 1982 and may have given the group its first grant. He now attends the Northampton chapter’s rehearsals on occasion.
“I know what it will become because we’re all the same in both groups … and everyone [in the Northampton group] is lovely,” he said. “[And] I like everyone in the chorus in New York.”
Various artists and public figures, including Gloria Estefan, Rachel Maddow and Paul Shaffer, will make video cameos during the show.
Though Cilman had long envisioned a second Young@Heart chapter, funding challenges made expansion difficult. “It’s a great place to have a group, but it’s a harder place to find funding,” he said. The vision finally became reality last year with support from The Janey Fund, the same organization that backs Y@H’s PrisonVision program.
Cilman was able to secure a rehearsal space at the Abrons Art Center, part of the Henry Street Settlement, a social service agency on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The Janey Fund provides funding to the Henry Street Settlement.
He and Y@H co-director Julia van IJken went to the Abrons Art Center in September in an attempt to build the group after spreading the word through press releases and social media.
“We decided we’ll be there for a week. You didn’t have to come for the whole week, but just come and see what it is,” Cilman said. “And the first day, four people showed up, and the second day, like, eight people showed up. By the time we left, there [were] about 18 people, and they were beginning to sound pretty good.”
Now, the New York City chapter has about two dozen singers. They performed their first show, “Home Is Where the Heart Is,” with the Brooklyn Youth Chorus on Tuesday, March 10. Held as a benefit for the Brooklyn immigrant justice organization New Sanctuary Coalition, the show played to a packed house and even inspired several people to join the chapter.
For New York City chapter member Joan Jeffri, the crowd at that show was “one of the best audiences” she ever had.
Jeffri’s connection to the group began nearly two decades ago. As the founder of the Performing Arts Legacy project — which helps aging artists document their careers — she first felt the pull to join Y@H after watching the group’s 2007 documentary.
“I remember saying, ‘I want to be with that group, but I’m not moving to Northampton.’ So many years later, I got my wish,” she said.
Although Jeffri jokingly claims her days as a performer were a century ago, she confessed to a friend last year that she missed singing. A surgery decades ago had left her deaf in one ear, creating a significant barrier to her return. She explained that she was afraid to sing because she could no longer hear her own voice in her head.
Two days after that, she got a call from Cilman. “It was like the universe was talking to me,” she said. He told her that he was starting a satellite group in New York City and figured she could help him recruit older performers. She told him: “Only if you put me at the top of the list!”
Cilman wasn’t sure if Jeffri qualified to join — that is, whether or not she was 75 or older — but she assured him she was.
“That was the beginning of a great relationship,” she said, and since she joined, the group has helped her “in more ways than I can talk about.”
She’s looking forward to meeting and performing with the Northampton chapter at the upcoming show, and she appreciates the New York City chapter for its talent, its diversity and the sense of community it fosters.
“What happens very often when older people get together, depending on the venue, they’re talking about their complaints and their pains and their aches,” she said. At Y@H rehearsals, however, “We’re talking about singing and joy. This is pure joy, as far as I’m concerned.”
Tickets are $25.16 to $57.90, fees included, at aomtheatre.com, by phone at 413-584-9032, or at the Academy of Music box office.
