Last screening at 3:45pm Thurs
Starring Robert DuVall, Sissy Spacek and Bill Murray
For advance tickets visit www.movietickets.com
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First performance Live from Royal Opera House
Cosi Fan Tutte
Friday September 10th 2:00PM
Sunday September 12th 11:00AM prerecorded
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Sept 9th 8:30pm
See new release Leonard Cohen on our screen before the dvd is available for sale. SONGS FROM THE ROAD, a dozen of Cohen’s most famous songs from that world tour, the best of Cohen’s performances at auditoriums, arenas, and stadiums from Tel Aviv to London
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Special screenings of
BEHIND THE HEDGEROW
a look inside the private world of aristocratic Newport
September 7th-September 16th limited showtimes
HELD OVER FOR ANOTHER WEEK UNTIL SEPTEMBER 16TH. Filmmaker David Bettencourt will be at the theater for q and a on September 8th.
Admission $10, members $6
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Senior chorus brings new meaning to rock classics
Senior chorus brings new meaning to rock classics
By James J. Gillis
Daily News staff
The Young@Heart chorus performs at the Jane Pickens Theatre on Sunday to kick off fundraising for the Newport International Film Festival. (Ashley Wilkerson/Daily News staff)
NEWPORT — The members of the Young@Heart chorus are long of tooth and long of spirit.
The members — whose average age is 80 — packed the 550-seat Jane Pickens Theater and Event Center on Sunday with a concert following a screening of the documentary film that bears the group’s name. It was the first time the Northampton, Mass., chorus has sung in combination with a screening of the movie.
“It’s a strange feeling,” choir director Bob Cilman said. “But it’s good.”
The strangest part of the Young@Heart show is the material. The seniors — the youngest is 72, the oldest 89 — tackle songs from the late 1960s (Jimi Hendrix) up to the 2000s (Flaming Lips) and learn well-known tunes such as “Purple Haze” and obscure ones like “Schizophrenia” by Sonic Youth.
The afternoon was a fundraiser for the Newport International Film Festival (which runs June 3-8) and was a huge hit with the crowd that packed the Pickens. Audience members cheered the film and then rewarded the singers with long standing ovations, while taking time out to sing “Happy Birthday” to 89-year-old violinist Miriam Leader.
Young@Heart frequently tours Europe and the film’s release has increased demand in New England, leading to an audience sprinkled with out-of-staters from as far as Atlanta. Amy Bartlett and her husband, Shep, traveled from Peterborough, N.H. “It was absolutely fantastic, the film and the show, the whole thing,” Amy Bartlett said. “I wouldn’t have wanted to miss it.”
The chorus, which travels with a small band, has been together for 26 years. Cilman said the group began singing old songs from the early to mid-20th century but veered into the Beatles’ “Let It Be” in 1984, which triggered a switch to more modern sounds. In the film, members talk of their love of classical music and opera.
But the closest their act comes to opera is probably Queen’s “Bicycle Race,” which members rehearsed but did not perform on Sunday. At 55, Cilman is the baby of the outfit and in the movie he is described, with some affection, as a taskmaster, working to get the best out of his singers, even when they’re thrown by Sonic Youth and James Brown.
“He chews nails and spits blood,” one member joked.
The singers are vulnerable to health problems, an aspect treated poignantly in the film, and all of the original members are gone. The song selection is not without irony. Which is why you hear “Heaven” by Talking Heads, “All We Have is Now” by Flaming Lips and, the closer, “Forever Young” by Bob Dylan, sung in a hush in the first few verses.
“They’re very good with lyrics,” Cilman said after an early-afternoon rehearsal. “I think that’s because they come from a time when lyrics were very important.”
Film festival staffers first saw the movie — which opens Friday at the Pickens — at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah. Newport International Film Festival Executive Director Louisa M. Percudani said combining the screening and concert sounded like the perfect fundraiser.
“They’re right in our backyard,” she said. “We had to get them here.”
After rehearsal, the singers piled aboard a bus for a tour of Newport. For member Helen Boston, who’s been singing with the group for six years, it was her first visit here. But Young@Heart has taken her well outside New England; to places she never imagined visiting.
“We’ve been all over Europe,” said Boston, 78. “And everything is paid for.”
Boston said she had to learn some of the songs from her children. She said she will keep singing as long as she can.
“I can’t imagine where I’d be without this,” Boston said.
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