“The sackbuts are coming!” is a post I wrote back in 2015 and should tell you everything you need to know about the early trombone. That’s when I wrote:

The sack . . . what? Is that kind of a joke?  Can you imagine your kid coming home from school and saying, “Mom and dad, I’m going to play the sackbut!” Someone even said, “What a dumb name for an instrument!”

It so happens that the sackbut ensemble ¡Sacabuche! will be making their third trip to Hawaii, this time to reprise a program they performed at the University of California Berkeley Art Museum in June 2016. Along with three local musicians, they’ll be playing an Early Music Hawaii concert on Saturday, March 9 at the Lutheran Church of Honolulu called “Intimate Voices.” The concert will be repeated the next day, March 10 in Kailua-Kona at the Lutheran Church of the Holy Trinity.

Here is how Linda Pearce, artistic director,  described the Berkeley concert, also called “Intimate Voices”:

The polyphonic motets of this program are some of the first music to include idiomatic, explicitly instrumental parts. These exquisite works will be contrasted with virtuosic Italian instrumental music. Voices, cornetto, recorder, violins, sackbuts, theorbo, and organ offer a feast for the ears and soul. 

This past week I was tasked with creating a postcard for the Hawaii events. The name of the concert, “Intimate Voices,” had already been decided and for the uninformed (like myself), it seemed to be an oxymoron—are sackbuts instruments of intimacy?

After all, here’s what Wikipedia says:

The sackbut was described as suitable for playing with the ‘loud’ ensembles in the outdoors, as well as the ‘soft’ ensembles inside. The alta capella bands are seen in drawings as entertaining outside with ensembles including shawms, trumpets and trombones. When pushed, sackbuts can easily make a loud and brassy sound.

I looked for images of sackbuts, a seemingly ridiculous name for a musical instrument, and not surprisingly, I found a drawing of soldiers on horseback playing sackbuts!

Not exactly a picture of intimacy, eh?

Finally Ian Capps wanted to emphasize that there are local musicians joining the group for these concerts. They are: Georgine Stark, soprano; Scott Fikse, baritone, and Jieun Kim Newland, organ.

So I searched for sackbuts another way and this is what I came up with:

If you’d like to hear samples of these smooth, intimate sounds, click here.

Tickets are available at the door or at earlymusichawaii.com.