Adeline McDermott first became well known to her fellow Jamaicans in the early 1890s, when she was already being styled the ‘Prima Donna’ of the Kingston Choral Union. This all-Black group had been started in 1882 by T Ellis Jackson, and had become a prominent feature of the Jamaican entertainment scene. The choir performed a wide variety of classical and popular music, both local and foreign. As early as 1892-3 Miss McDermott was being called ‘Jamaica’s Patti’ or ‘Jamaica’s Black Patti’ after the famous operatic soprano, Adelina Patti, and the well-known Black American soprano, Sissieretta Jones, who had toured the West Indies in 1888.

In 1895 the Kingston Choral Union won first prize in a choral competition held in Kingston. In writing of a concert given by the group after its victory, the Jamaica Post’s correspondent wrote of her  ‘Of the soloists, Miss A. McDermott was emphatically the most successful.  Harrison Millard’s “Waiting” is generally severely ill treated by most amateurs; but Miss McDermott's truly brilliant and sympathetic rendering of the delicate little song appealed to us most sincerely.’

Miss McDermott continued to be one of the leading lights of the KCU; in 1901 she sang at a concert in support of Henry Sylvester Williams and the Pan-African Association, and the Jamaica Times wrote of her performance – “the talent shown, by Miss McDermott in acting and singing is of a marked character, something every Jamaican should be proud of.  She acts and she sings as if her heart were in it.”

Naturally, when the KCU made their historic tours of Britain in 1906, and again in 1907-8, she was an important member of the choir. During these three years the group, which came to be known as ‘The Famous Jamaica Choir’, travelled the length and breadth of the British Isles, singing in theatres and concert halls in many major towns and cities.

After the Jamaica Choir returned to Jamaica, Miss McDermott continued to feature in its programmes, though other, younger, singers, especially Miss Hannah Welsh, were challenging her pre-eminent position. In 1911 she married and was usually after that referred to as ‘Madame McDermott-Tavares’. Her singing career continued into the 1920s, but it seems possible that she died in the later years of that decade, since there is no reference to her in relation to the concert tour of the island made by another member of the choir, Joseph Packer Ramsay, who returned from abroad in 1930.