Rolling With the Old School of Rock

Patricia Larese is a member of the Young@Heart Chorus, at the national Hotel in Miami, Florida. Josh Ritchie

Patricia Larese’s moment to change her life came by chance. She was attending a movie screening for older adults in Hadley, Mass., when the president of a chorus based in nearby Northampton paid a recruiting visit.

“You don’t have a bad voice. Why don’t you try it?” a friend urged Larese, a widow who had recently taken early retirement.

The Young@Heart Chorus. —Photo: Timothy White

Larese, who previously had sung only in her high school glee club and church choir, remembers her low-pressure introduction to the group when she went to her first rehearsal. “I really was very lucky because I was singing along with everybody,” she says. Chorus director Bob Cilman asked the woman next to her, “ ‘How does she sound?’ And she said, ‘Pretty good.’ ”

Fifteen years later, Larese, 77, is president and treasurer of the lively Young@Heart Chorus, whose members, in their 70s and 80s, belt out punk, rock and R&B tunes by artists ranging from James Brown to the Clash. Their love of singing, life and one another is celebrated in the new documentary Young@Heart, now playing in theaters in New York and Los Angeles, later nationwide. The film promises to vault the chorus, founded by Cilman in 1982 at a senior center, to a new level of celebrity.

“When people come to see us, they think we’re going to stand there and sing,” says Larese. “It’s not like that.” The songs are arranged into original shows with titles such as “Road to Heaven” and “Road to Nowhere.” “We play parts,” Larese says. “Each man in his time plays many parts, right?”

Larese’s earlier real-life roles included secretary, wife and mother of four. She lost a 19-year-old daughter to Hodgkin’s disease and helped nurse a son with the same deadly form of cancer through a bone marrow transplant that saved his life.

“In the chorus, everyone has had tragedies. They’ve lived a lot of years,” she says. “But we put it behind us for this. This is something very cheerful to do.” Larese suffers from a painful nerve condition, “but I find when I’m at rehearsal it doesn’t hurt at all.”

The chorus has supplied Larese with close companions and an opportunity to travel across Europe. The group has performed for the king and queen of Norway, and with David Byrne of Talking Heads.

“I think it gives you a little bit more confidence—that you have something to do, you have a purpose,” Larese says.

The documentary details how the chorus periodically—both individually and collectively—has to deal with illness and death. “But people just overcome and carry on,” Larese says, “because you can’t just stop.”

See the Young@Heart documentary trailer.