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Sing While You Can: Why I Joined a Gospel Choir
After decades away from singing, I learned a powerful lesson about joy, aging and making the most of the abilities I have today
When singing is such a big part of your identity, what happens when age or illness steals your voice?
Lily Qian
Singing has always brought me more joy than any other activity in life. I’m not a great singer, just a good, serviceable one. Still, singing, especially with a group, fulfills me as nothing else does.
That’s why I’m glad I made the decision last year, after decades of not singing in public, to join a gospel choir. In my 20s, I worked as a singer/dancer/actor, touring the world. But when I left that career about 25 years ago, I didn’t realize how much I would miss singing with others.
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I started thinking about returning as I heard about other singers losing their voices. I’ve always been a huge Linda Ronstadt fan, largely because there’s not a genre of music she can’t sing brilliantly. So when she was diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy, which prevented her from singing any longer, I felt devastated for her. To have such an integral part of her identity stolen from her seemed incomprehensible. But Ronstadt practices what she calls “radical acceptance” and maintains her connection to music by listening (mostly to opera) and by singing in her head.
In 1997, following surgery to remove a cyst on her vocal cord, Julie Andrews was similarly robbed of her singing voice late in life. “I went into a depression. It felt like I’d lost my identity,” she told AARP. While nothing can replace singing, Andrews says that with her daughter’s encouragement, she found a new voice by writing children’s books.
And just recently, Barry Manilow fought lung cancer and survived a left lung lobectomy that left him unable to sing the way he had for decades. Facing the possibility that his voice may never fully recover, Manilow told ABC News that his circumstances shifted his priorities: “Have I done everything I wanted to do? Have I been good to people? Have I made people feel good?”
Adam Turner, far right, sings with the Marble Collegiate Gospel Choir in New York City in May 2025.
David Crandall
I started ruminating on what it would mean to lose my own singing voice. While I’m far from a world‑renowned vocalist, singing is an intrinsic part of who I am. It is both how I process and communicate emotion. It is therapy, prayer and worship. I found myself occasionally pondering the loss that each of those famous singers suffered, and feeling deep sadness, even fear. The awareness that singing was a central part of my self‑care and expression led me to join a gospel choir last year, despite nerves that nearly prevented me from doing so.
At a Sunday service in New York City celebrating Martin Luther King Jr., I had a visceral, emotional response to the gospel choir’s performance. I found myself sobbing as I listened to them lift their voices together. I missed that release in the decades since I’d last sat in a rehearsal room, learning a new piece of music. I knew I had to sing with them.
Following the service, I introduced myself to the choir director and thanked him for his moving work. The next day, I wrote him a lengthy email explaining my background and inquiring how one went about joining his choir. Once accepted, I was assigned to the tenors, because they didn't have a baritone section.
Turner is working on a memoir.
Ted Bolen
Soon I was spending a few hours each Sunday learning my vocal part, singing with a talented, soulful group and wondering why I’d waited so long to do something that always brought me such satisfaction and joy.
I was amazed to discover that I was far more relaxed and less concerned about how I was perceived than I had been in my youth. That relaxation and the demand of singing with the tenors led me to sing notes higher than I ever had. Self‑imposed boundaries from years of self‑consciousness and fear fell away. Singing in my 50s was less fraught and more gleeful.
My father, an excellent lifelong athlete, had a brain tumor a few years back. He survived a lengthy surgery to remove the tumor successfully, but his athletic skills were deeply impacted. His determination to fight through and play golf in his diminished capacity seemed like yet another example of the fragility of our bodies and why it’s so important to use them to experience joy today, because our bodies may not be able to tomorrow. Watching him continue to golf despite his frustrations taught me that joy was in the doing, not in doing perfectly.
Whether it’s golf or singing — or hiking or powerlifting — any happiness that’s dependent on our bodies’ capabilities is fleeting. As we age, we become increasingly aware of those endpoints. I don’t want to look back and wish I’d sung more. I want to be grateful for every moment that I do.
AARP essays share a point of view in the author’s voice, drawn from expertise or experience, and do not necessarily reflect the views of AARP.
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