EXTRA **** Wachet auf ruft uns die Stimme with Andy Offutt Irwin and Friends

This week, on social media, we posted a video of our friend Andy Offutt Irwin performing one of his really wonderful Aunt Marguerite stories for a live audience right here in our studios as part of our Apple Seed Live series. It was recorded before everyone went home to isolate themselves during the COVID-19 pandemic, and we’re so glad we have those video recordings to cheer our hearts with terrific stories. You can find them by heading over to our Facebook page. We’ll keep posting them there. The Andy Offutt Irwin piece is about a visit between a little girl named Shayla, and her doctor, Marguerite Van Camp, Andy’s fictional great aunt, who went back to medical school as an octogenarian. It’s a lovely piece, and you should go to Facebook to take a look. Posting that piece of Andy’s on social media left us with a hankering to show off one of Andy’s other talents, one we don’t get to feature on The Apple Seed as much as we ought to – Andy, as his storytelling audiences across the country know, is a whistler par excellence. And on a recent set of recordings, a set of recordings that features a terrific story called Love at 85, the story of dear Aunt Marguerite stumbling into an affectionate relationship with an old friend named Ike, there is also this track that we want to bring you here in this Apple Seed Extra. It’s the fourth movement of one of the loveliest of Bach’s cantatas, written for strings and voices – The cantata is called “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme,” or “Awake, calls the voice to us," a text inspired by the biblical parable of the Ten Virgins. This movement is called “Zion Hears the Watchmen Singing.” Bach’s cantata was first performed in 1731, but the whole thing is based on a Lutheran Hymn written way back in 1598 by Phillip Nicolai. He wrote the hymn during a time when the plague had hit the town where he was living as a preacher. And when he published the hymn, it came with a preface, in which Niccolai said: "Day by day I wrote out my meditations, found myself, thank God, wonderfully well, comforted in heart, joyful in spirit, and truly content; gave to my manuscript the name and title of a Mirror of Joy... to leave behind me (if God should call me from this world) as a token of my peaceful, joyful, Christian departure, or (if God should spare me in health) to comfort other sufferers whom He should also visit with the pestilence." This tune seemed to be an appropriate comfort during such a time as we are living. This version is an arrangement for bass and harp, with Andy whistling. We thought we’d bring this to you, our Apple Seed family, as today’s Apple Seed Extra. Here are Andy and his friends with Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, Awake, calls the voice to us, here, on The Apple Seed. Find more of Andy's work at andyirwin.com.