Reposted from Facebook
The man who had run PR Newswire moved to Hawaii and answered the phones.
It was 2002. Ian Capps had just retired after nine years as president and CEO of PR Newswire, the New York company that sends press releases out to the world’s newsrooms.
Before that came Reuters, starting in 1964. Europe. Latin America. The Middle East. London. He left Reuters in 1980 as deputy manager for North America. Nearly 40 years in the news business.
He was not born kamaʻāina. He grew up in London and went to Oxford. He learned Greek as a tour guide in Greece and Portuguese as a Reuters reporter in Brazil. In New York he met Jeannette Goya, both of them singing Renaissance music. She was born in Hawaii and had gone to UH.
When he retired, they moved to her home state.
Shortly after they landed, the two of them walked into Hawaii Public Radio to answer phones during a pledge drive. A man who had spent his life moving the world’s news sat and took calls from listeners, one pledge at a time.
Then he kept coming back. He volunteered in the station’s music department for two years. Jeannette Capps walked into HPR with him that first pledge drive in 2002, and she was a volunteer there too. The two of them met singing Renaissance music in New York and kept singing together in Honolulu. Early Music Hawaii is still presenting concerts this season, and HPR has kept The Early Muse episodes online. If The Early Muse kept you company, or you sang alongside Ian at an Early Music Hawaii concert, his friends would be glad to hear it here.
In December 2004 he started an hour of his own. He called it The Early Muse. Medieval chant. Troubadour songs. Renaissance and early Baroque. Music from the 12th century to the 17th, five hundred years of it, one hour EVERY week.
He did it alone. He spent about 25 hours a week on each show, researching, writing and recording it himself. HPR did not pay him, and he did not want to be paid. His friend Gene Schiller remembered what he said about it: “Once I start working for money, all the fun will drain away; the joy will be gone.”
Schiller, his colleague at HPR, said he never heard Ian speak an unkind word about anyone.
He also led Early Music Hawaii, the nonprofit that brings medieval, Renaissance and Baroque concerts to Oʻahu and Hawaiʻi Island, and built it into the islands’ leading presenter of that music.
Week after week, for nearly 21 years, the show went out without a break.
On Sunday night, September 21, 2025, at 11 p.m., Ian Capps died. He was 84 years old.
For nearly 21 years he never missed a week. Five weeks after he died, the show signed off for good.
On October 25, 2025, HPR aired the last one, a tribute called The Sunset Show Finale. On November 9, at the Lutheran Church of Honolulu, four singers from the Early Music Hawaii Chamber Choir sang the music he had asked for at his own memorial: Byrd, Victoria, Gesualdo, Morales, Monteverdi, Josquin. Then the congregation sang Holst’s hymn tune Thaxted.
This month, one year on, Early Music Hawaii dedicated its Portuguese polyphony concert to him. Gene Schiller wrote the tribute in the program. “Ian didn’t do it for money…he did it for love.”
The concerts go on. The Early Muse archive is still on HPR’s website, the work of a man who was never paid for it, free to anyone who presses play.
Ian Capps came to Hawaii to answer the phones. The music he left is still ours.
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I have no idea who wrote that post for “Aloha Hawaii” — a local and travel website with 246,000 followers. However, I would like to thank him or her for giving a shout-out to Early Music Hawaii, one of Ian’s favorite projects for which he contributed much, not only his knowledge of early music, but even the “grunt work” of going to Hamilton Library at the University of Hawaii to research and copy scores, making contact with visiting early music groups, and even mundane things like picking up the printed programs from the printer. (Now, guess who does it!) More importantly, he supported the organization financially, and we on the Early Music Hawaii board are just starting to learn how much he put into the organization as we try to pick up the pieces.
If you feel so inclined, I encourage you to donate to Early Music Hawaii so that we may continue to present high quality programs of medieval, Renaissance and Baroque music. We were happy to have an enthusiastic full house for “Portuguese Polyphony” and know that if more people came to our concerts, they would love and appreciate this genre of music. We look forward to presenting even more innovative and crowd-pleasing programs in the months to come and will be able to do so with your financial help. We have a goal of bringing Early Music Hawaii to all the major Hawaiian islands some day.
As Board Member Bill Potter said at the concert, “I remember Ian saying that only about 30% of the cost of the concert was covered by ticket sales. That means that instead of paying $35 a ticket per concert, it really costs $125 per ticket.” Ouch!
Recently I had a luncheon for Michael Cuthbert and his wife, Elina Hamilton, and they remarked that when they first moved to Hawaii, they were astounded to find Ian Capps’ “The Early Muse” on public radio. “Even Boston doesn’t have an early music program like this!” they mentioned to me. I was very glad to hear that all the Early Muse programs have been archived, and perhaps they can be aired again.
Thanks for listening.