Military choir gathers at air base for album launch

They’re stronger together – and getting stronger every day.

The singers of Wattisham Military Wives’ choir are today celebrating the release of the military wives’ album Stronger Together, available from today.

The choir, which was formed at Wattisham Airfield in January, this year, has already earned wide acclaim for its singing.

Members of the 40-strong group, which sings under the musical direction of choirmaster Michael Dann, have already appeared at the Classical Brits at the Royal Albert Hall, recorded the Jubilee song Sing at the Abbey Road Studios, and performed at the Diamond Jubilee concert at Buckingham Palace.

A network of wives’ choirs have sprung up at military bases around the country and the new album brings them together in a celebration of music.

At Wattisham yesterday, the choir wives, along with some of their husbands, gathered in a hangar with two Apache helicopters for a 2013 calendar photoshoot.

Choir co-ordinator Sally Wilkinson said the Wattisham Wives sing in three of the songs on the album.

They sing in the title number and in the Barry Manilow classic One Voice but their main number, which they recorded with the wives’ choir of RAF Marham, Norfolk, is Counting Time, a song which, like the uplifting Stronger Together, was specially written for the album by Gareth Malone.

It was Gareth Malone’s TV series about the formation of a military wives’ choir that inspired so many Army, Air Force and Navy wives to get together and sing, making good friends along the way.

Sally said all the singers are listed on the album sleeve... “about 650 of them”, she says with a smile.

In September the Military Wives’ Choirs broke a world record for the biggest-ever video shoot in music history when more than 600 gathered for filming as the new album was announced and The Military Wives’ Choirs Foundation was launched. Songs on the album, which is likely to be a Christmas bestseller, include Sing, Rule the World, In the Bleak Midwinter, Long and Winding Road and Right Here Waiting.

n Stronger Together is released on November 5; The Wattisham Military Wives’ Choir 2013 calendar will be available nearer Christmas.