Back in 1982, when he first started leading a singing group of elderly residents in the Walter Salvo House in Northampton, Bob Cilman wasn’t sure if this new venture was going to fly.

“I couldn’t imagine it lasting more than two weeks,” he says with a laugh.

But here we are in 2022, and the Young@Heart Chorus is still here — an institution in the Valley, whose members have sung in different parts of the world, been the subject of an acclaimed documentary, collaborated with numerous other musicians and performers, and weathered the worst of COVID-19.

And as Y@H readies for a 40th anniversary concert at Northampton’s Academy of Music on Nov. 20, Cilman is still directing the group, the singers are still ranging through a mix of pop, rock, soul and more, and the chorus is busy with another project: a documentary that will highlight distinctive performances from their long career.

“I tend not to look back, but when I do, I’m reminded of how much we’ve done and how we’ve just kept working,” Cilman, the former Northampton Arts Council director, said during a recent phone call. “We’ve had a lot of challenges over time, a lot just in the last couple of years, but we’ve worked through them.”

Most recently, the pandemic forced the group and its backing band to figure out how to rehearse remotely. Drawing on that experience, Young@Heart produced a number of virtual performances in the last couple of years before the group began rehearsing in person again this past February.

But stumbling blocks have remained. The 40th anniversary concert had to be postponed in spring when some chorus members contracted COVID; two singers also faced more serious health issues during the past year. Then, from late July through September, Cilman was forced to watch most rehearsals from home via Zoom when he developed respiratory problems (they were not COVID-related).

The anniversary show was then postponed again, from October to the new Nov. 20 date.

Illness “kind of knocked me for a loop, but fortunately we’ve got a great support team here, so we could keep working,” said Cilman, who returned to lead live rehearsals in October.

One key to that support is Julia van IJken, a Dutch native who got involved with Y@H in 2020 when she discovered the group online while working on a master’s degree in experimental communication at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.

Cilman says van IJken contacted Y@H and then, working from Europe, played a big role in helping produce their online shows. And for the last year, she’s been here in the Valley working with the chorus in a number of ways, including filling in for Cilman at rehearsals while he recovered. “Julia’s been amazing,” he said.

When she first watched Y@H online a few years ago, van IJken said at a recent rehearsal, “I knew I wanted to be involved … what they were doing seemed so unique.”

The chorus also finally returned to live performance this summer, singing at the Green River Festival and at The Big E in Springfield. But, Cilman said, “we still have work to do.”

Taking care of business

That work was in progress at a recent rehearsal in the Divine Theater at Gateway City Arts in Holyoke, with the seven-member band clustered on the small Art Deco-style stage — guitarist Joe Boyle sat on the steps leading up to it — and the chorus members standing by chairs in the audience area.

For the anniversary show, Cilman & Co. have dug deep into the Young@Heart vault for some of the older material the chorus has performed over the years.

At one point, the singers worked through a medley that included three mid-sixties Rolling Stones songs, a tune by the Fugs, and the Frank Sinatra standard “My Way,” all of it accompanied by several tempo changes, some solo and full-chorus singing, and choreographed moves by chorus members with their chairs.

That medley, Cilman explained later, came from shows Y@H performed in Europe in the 1990s and 2000s while partnering with No Theater of Northampton. But for the 2022 chorus members, firming up the details of how to position their chairs was proving tricky, especially when they sang an arrangement of another rock staple, Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.”

“You can’t wait for me to tell you when to move your chairs,” Cilman said at one point. “The music sounds good, but we need to get the other things right.”

That music ranged widely, from longtime staples such as “Forever Young” by Bob Dylan to older material including “Somebody to Love” by the Jefferson Airplane and Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze,” with Gloria Parker (who joined Y@H in 1995) and Norm Moreau alternating lead singing on the latter.

The chorus also flashed all the way back to 1982 with “Sweet Sue,” a 1920s jazz standard that Cilman says is the first tune Y@H ever performed live.

There were any number of poignant moments — a reminder that even with the hardships old age can bring, making music can lift spirits. After a number of songs, Cilman wheeled Steve Martin, who’s just shy of 94 and one of Young@Heart’s longest-tenured members, in his wheelchair up to a microphone to sing “I Remember It Well,” a song from the 1958 film “Gigi.”

“When Steve first came to the chorus, I asked him what he sang, and he said, ‘I sing Broadway musicals,’ ” said Cilman, his hand resting on Martin’s right shoulder. “Well, after all his years here, he’s going to do one again.”

Martin sang a duet on the song with his friend Shirley Stevens, a Y@H member since 2008, then had to switch gears abruptly to handle the lead on “Schizophrenia” by Sonic Youth.

“Thurston Moore would be proud of you,” Cilman said to him afterward.

In a recent phone call, Martin, who joined Y@H in 2000, said he’d be at the Nov. 20 concert “if I have to crawl to get there. It is such an honor to be a part of the group, to be able to show that elderly people can stay active and entertain all kinds of audiences … and it’s an honor to sing for Bob after all he’s done. Four decades!”

The passage of time is a continual theme for Young@Heart. Just last month, the chorus marked the loss of one its members, Glenda Phillips, who’d been with the group since 2007 and was nearly 92, and other members have passed in recent years. About 150 people have sung with the chorus since it began, Cilman says.

Watching Martin sing, you couldn’t help but recall one of the iconic moments from the chorus’ history, captured in the 2007 documentary “Young@Heart” by Stephen Walker, when the late Fred Knittle, hooked up to an oxygen tank, sat by himself on the Academy of Music stage to sing Coldplay’s “Fix You” to quiet piano accompaniment.

Cilman is 69 himself, and though he hasn’t yet thought about who might eventually take over direction of the chorus from him, he says he wouldn’t mind passing along some of the group’s administrative business right now.

He does, though, see some sort of symbolism at work, given that Van IJken, the Dutch woman who began working with Young@Heart a few years ago, is the same age — 29 — that he was when he began directing the group.

“We’d like to see if we can get Julia’s visa extended,” he said with a laugh.

Tickets for Young@Heart’s 40th anniversary concert are available at youngatheartchorus.com. The show will include tributes to past chorus members, including video clips.

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