The Young@Heart Chorus's Grand Pop

Out of the Mouths of Seniors, Rock Tunes Soar Anew

Three elderly men shuffle into a hotel suite to kvetch about Sonic Youth's cacophonous art-rock song, "Schizophrenia."

No, this is not the setup to a bad musical joke. Just a day in the promotional life of the Young@Heart Chorus, a group of two dozen retirees from Northampton, Mass., who travel the world performing striking interpretations of rock and R&B songs.

Their work is documented in a new film, "Young@Heart," which focuses on the hoary group's efforts to add seven "new" songs to their repertoire in seven weeks -- none more disagreeable than "Schizophrenia," which was introduced by chorus director Bob Cilman in a moment of twisted, visionary genius.

"We didn't care for the song," recalls Len Fontaine, one of the stars of the documentary. An 87-year-old former Navy pilot, Fontaine is sitting in a room at the Georgetown Ritz-Carlton, and he is talking about how, in the case of Sonic Youth, the Young@Heart Chorus truly suffered for its art. "It hurt my ears," he says.

"Noise," agrees Brock Lynch, an 83-year-old retired doctor who also didn't care for the song's lyrical concerns.

"Not my kind of music," says John Larareo, 76, who used to work at Amherst College. "I grew up listening to Sinatra -- the standards."

Still, after the initial shock wore off, the group went to work on "Schizophrenia," eventually stripping the song of its guitar-based dissonance and turning it into a breathtaking choral piece that retains the original's visceral kick and the trenchant lyric: "My future is static/It's already had it."

The song's development -- culminating in a wildly received performance at Northampton's Academy of Music Theater at the conclusion of the film -- is a central part of the narrative of "Young@Heart," which opens in Washington on Friday. It's also a tidy encapsulation of what makes the chorus succeed on an artistic level: The adventuresome if dogged direction of Cilman, whose work has elevated "Young@Heart" well beyond the cute, gimmicky notion of old people singing angsty, provocative youth music.

"He knows what he wants," Fontaine says. Says Larareo: "He has a vision." Says Lynch: "He's a taskmaster. But it works; people seem to like what we do."

Says Cilman, in the same hotel suite a short time later: "There's something about working at a song, not really trusting it or believing it's going to pay off, and then having this huge response to it. . . . That's what makes art interesting."

But "Young@Heart" isn't about the 54-year-old Cilman, who grew up in New England listening to the Beatles and the Kinks and performing in bands (including one called the Self-Righteous Brothers) and who started the chorus 26 years ago while working at a senior center in Northampton.

Instead, it's about life and death, about creativity and vitality, about what happens when old people co-opt a piece of youth culture. Or, as the movie's British director and narrator, Stephen Walker, says: "It's a rock opera about old age." One that even includes music videos, such as the Hearts doing a borderline-ranting version of the old Ramones anthem, "I Wanna Be Sedated," in an old folks' home. Now that is punk rock!