Age no barrier to Sing for Joy
This community choir for the elderly proves it’s never too late to try something new.
Alma Schleider has followed music for as long as she can remember – from London, where she grew up, all the way to Adelaide.
At 11 years old she would sing and dance to entertain American troops in London in the early 1940s. Eventually, her love of singing and performing brought her to the other side of the world when she joined The Gilbert & Sullivan Society of South Australia in the early 1970s.
Now, at 95, Alma is one of the oldest members of ACH Group’s Sing for Joy community choirs, but with her musical theatre background, she injects life into every performance.
Sing for Joy is comprised of six choirs based in ACH Group residential care homes and six community choirs across Campbelltown, Tea Tree Gully, Port Noarlunga, Findon, Glandore and Glenelg, where Alma practices every Wednesday.
“I just love singing and acting in front of people, it brings me alive,” Alma says.
Alma was with Victor Harbor’s South Coast Choral and Arts Society for 12 years until she moved to Glenelg five years ago.
With no thriving local community theatre scene at the time, Alma joined her first choir, which, for someone who is used to performing solo, was quite the adjustment.
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“I found it quite difficult at first because I’ve always been singing solos where you can bend the notes,” she says.
“But Paul was really good – he just used to look at me and I’d think ‘uh-oh’, and I’d have to come back into the choir with everyone else.”
Sing for Joy choir director Paul Sinkinson has been directing all of the community choirs since he started the role in 2018.
“It’s a social event on their calendar and many of them do say it’s the highlight of their week,” Paul says.
“The goal isn’t to perform; it is about the week-to-week socialising and connection and the learning experience.”
Paul, a lecturer at Adelaide University, knows when to teach and when to hold back.
“When we’re learning a new song, I try not to get too educational, because you can read the room and see people getting a bit bored or switching off, so I don’t go into lecture mode if I can help it,” he says.
Every two years, all 12 community and residential home Sing for Joy choirs come together for a large-scale performance – the most recent in May was the biggest yet, with 150 singers performing for more than 500 people at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre.
“It was such a heart-warming, inclusive event,” says ACH Group CEO Linda Feldt.
“You could see the strength of the relationships on stage and the pride each person had in what they were a part of. The opportunity to share it with their friends and families was the absolute highlight.”
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Paul tells his singers that, yes, they have an audience, but the performance is ultimately for them.
“We love the week-to-week, but it is nice to have a goal and to have people actually hear all that hard work they’ve been doing, and to show off all of their achievements.”
Even after five years with Sing for Joy, Alma will never be able to shake her musical theatre background, and she’s started influencing her fellow choir members. When Alma was talked into performing A Couple of Swells for the Christmas party last year, she had to put her own twist on it.
“I said ‘I’m not just going to stand there and sing it, we’ve got to dress up for the part’,” she says.
“We dressed up and blacked our teeth out – we were a couple of tramps.”
Alma says her influence has even reached Paul, who dressed up as a pilot for the recent performance at the Entertainment Centre.
Like Alma, Paul lives and breathes music, but it’s not the music that makes Sing for Joy so special. It’s the connections that it forms and like-minded friendships. It’s the inspiration to try something new, no matter your age. It’s a purpose and it’s a way to keep the mind active.
“It keeps you going,” Alma says.
“I think if you’re not using your brain, you’re going to deteriorate – you’ve got to keep going.”
Paul says we’re still learning so much about music, memory and the brain.
“Music, I think, unlocks memory so much better than words.”
This article first appeared in the July 2026 issue of SALIFE magazine.
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