Ian Capps carried a cosmopolitan civility as effortlessly and as naturally as he wore his intellectual curiosity. He first came to HPR as a volunteer when he and his wife, Jeannette, came in to answer phones during an HPR pledge drive shortly after they relocated from New York City to her home state in 2002.
It was his love of music that first brought Capps to HPR, and a shared interest in singing Renaissance music that first brought him together with Jeannette when they both lived in New York.
At HPR, Capps brought his passion for the development of Western music over the 500 years from the 12th through the 17th centuries and gave it life with his weekly program "The Early Muse." Starting in December 2004, he hosted the weekly program without fail for more than two decades.
He also created the nonprofit organization Early Music Hawaiʻi, which has put on concerts in Hawaiʻi by leading local and international performers of medieval, Renaissance and Baroque music.
Born and raised in London, Capps was an Oxford University graduate who carried warm memories of Queen Elizabeth and her coronation. He described the scene and the hope that went with it while talking with HPRʻs Catherine Cruz on the death of the queen.
Capps was also a keen follower of the news, and always up for a detailed discussion of the political developments of countries and regions around the globe, which he was able to do fluently in a number of languages.
He spoke fondly of his many years with Reuters, both as a journalist and as a news executive, and of his time in New York, where he spent nine years as president and CEO of the global news distributor PR Newswire.
His HPR colleague of many years Gene Schiller said he never heard Capps say an unkind word about anyone, “with the possible exception of Gilbert and Sullivan.”
Capps enjoyed singing with groups in cities around the world, and said, “Early on in my travels, I discovered that music, as a universal language, is a great introduction to a new society. And that the voice is the easiest instrument to take with you wherever you go.”
