Northwell Health Nurse Choir shines on 'America's Got Talent'

This story contains spoilers.

On the June premiere of "America's Got Talent" season 16, Long Island's Northwell Health Nurse Choir earned a Golden Buzzer to the live quarterfinals that aired Tuesday. There they earned all four judges' praise for their stirring rendition of "You Will Be Found" from Broadway's "Dear Evan Hansen" — and on Wednesday's live show learned viewers had voted them on to the semifinals.

"I love you, I love what you did last night," comedian-judge Howie Mandel told them on-air after the tally. "I love what you do for the world in your day job. You are heroes. … Just keep doing what you do."

"We're just so excited," replied nurse Emanuel Remilus of New Hyde Park's Cohen Children’s Medical Center, speaking for the 18-member choir. "This is such a huge opportunity for us to be able to represent the nursing profession on such a huge stage, and I just hope that our message of hope really carries us through these rough times."

They and six other acts from Tuesday's show are continuing on, with five acts eliminated.

Earlier Wednesday, speaking by phone from Los Angeles, Plainview Hospital nurse educator Ben Thomas said they'd practiced "a pool of songs just to have them at the ready," and called the tune from the Tony Award-winning musical "definitely one of our stronger songs of hope."

It had been chosen by the choir's music producer-arranger, Tim Davis, along with representatives from the hospital corporation. "They don't ask us — we don't get a vote," chuckled fellow choir member Winnie Mele, 63, director of perioperative services at Plainview. "They're very careful about what song we're singing, to make sure it's appropriate."

The choir members, who come from 10 mostly Long Island hospitals in Northwell Health's 23-hospital system, had performed a medley of "Lean on Me" and "Stand by Me" on the season premiere, earning a Golden Buzzer from Mandel. On Tuesday he thanked them and other nurses for their challenging and dangerous work throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, while noting, "I can't detach the story of who you are from what you do and how you sound."

"I would say that both those things are deeply rooted," the Minneola-born Thomas, 31, told Newsday. "That's kind of our identity at this point, where we are nurses first and then singers as a byproduct of that. … And so I do feel like the two are interlocked."

"I think we're all talented enough with the music — we have good ears and if we're not doing a good job, we hear ourselves," Mele added. "We've put in an awful lot of time and effort, we've left our families, we're out here for 10 days — it's a huge commitment. So it's important to us that the product that we provide is excellent. That's our goal."

Mele and her husband, John, who has continued to work as a property manager in downtown Manhattan while under treatment for stage 4 cancer, have adult sons John, Joseph and James. Thomas and his physician wife, Lydia, a rheumatology fellow at Cohen Children’s Medical Center, have three children under age 3, including a weeks-old newborn.

The pandemic, said Thomas, "has been rough for everyone — people losing loved ones, people struggling with different things. We found each other during this pandemic," he said of himself and fellow members of the choir, formed last year by the nonprofit group Nurse Heroes. "We found strength in that, and we're hoping that message came across in our song."