What, exactly, is the Young@Heart? Here's what folks have to say about this one-of-a-kind chorus:

Fred Knittle wears his belt up high. His nose is tethered to an oxygen tank, and on stage he's confined to a folding chair. From this unlikely perch, he's turning rock 'n' roll on its head.

Singing Coldplay's "Fix You," Knittle transforms the song into a powerful ballad about a grandfather's healing wisdom. It means something different coming from an 80-year-old retiree suffering from congestive heart failure.

Knittle is a singer for the Young@Heart Chorus, whose members range from 73 to 92 years old. Singing songs they shouldn't even know, at an age when they're expected to be sitting quietly somewhere, they subvert all accepted notions of old and young.

Songs by bands like the Radiohead, OutKast and Nirvana take on a new dimension when performed by these 23 foot-stomping senior citizens. "Fix You" or the Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go" become about life and death.

Though little known in America, the Northampton-based Young@Heart has performed from Australia to London, serenaded the king and queen of Norway, been discussed on "The Daily Show," and been documented in an acclaimed film for British television. They're now recording an album tentatively titled "Rockin' At Heaven's Door."

It may sound like a gimmick, but Young@Heart is no karaoke act. They're a cover band for the ages.

~ Jake Coyle, AP Entertainment Writer

Read the entire article here

The 27-voice strong choir - average age 80 - brought a capacity crowd at Somerville Theatre to its feet several times with a tremendously vivacious two-act, 80-minute performance that was the physical embodiment of the group's name as its members dove into a diverse group of rock and soul covers with skill, humor, and pathos.

~ Sarah Rodman, The Boston Globe

Read the entire article here

Time revises every taste and closes every gap. To observe the Young@Heart Chorus, a fluctuating group of about two dozen singers whose average age is 80, perform "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees in Stephen Walker's documentary "Young@Heart" is to be uplifted, if slightly unsettled.

Sung by people approaching the end of their lives, the song is no longer about strutting through the urban jungle with your elbows out; it is a blunt survival anthem. These singers, most of them well- rehearsed amateurs, refuse to go gently into that good night. For them music is oxygen.

~ Stephen Holden, The New York Times

From start to finish, the Young@Heart Chorus charmed and pleased, hamming it up more than most stand-up comedians and entertaining the audience more than most stadium rockers. Bruce Springsteen echoed off of the balcony, Outkast's "Hey Ya" cracked up the crowd, and "Forever Young" left few dry eyes in the house. And through it all, 22 people between the ages of 71 and 93 looked like they were having the times of their well-lived lives.

~ Chris Barth, TheDarmouth.com

Clearly, these New England residents in their 70s, 80s and 90s are having the time of their lives. Singing and performing with youthful vigor for appreciative crowds — from Massachusetts prisoners to audiences in Europe and Australia — they could be poster children for AARP.

The Young@Heart chorus, started 25 years ago by Bob Cilman, 53, comprises an eclectic and endearing bunch of oldsters with a zest for life and enthusiasm for music. They also inspire with their upbeat attitudes and willingness to embrace the new and unfamiliar.

~ Claudia Puig, USA Today

The Young@Heart Chorus has been going strong since the early 1980s and has grown to become one of the biggest deals in international theatre, touring the world and filling venues, winning delighted, astonished ovations wherever they go. Young@Heart shows go far beyond a set-list, even though the performances of the songs are mind-altering, riveting and moving.

The concerts are theatrical visions, black-edged, intelligent and deep; complex in their choreography and provocative in their worldviews, demanding of the ensemble members that they brilliantly act as well as memorably sing, demanding from them a whole-body, whole-spirit, whole-life performance that is as uplifting as it is powerfully unsettling, as intoxicatingly funny and enlivening as it is poignant, beautiful, and profound.

~ Belinda McKeon - Irish Times