THE MUSIC MAN: Although it has been a while since he bowed his double bass in public, frequent contributor James Hanley Donelan’s years as the principal bass player in the Yale Symphony are the foundation of an all-around appreciation of music that has been a part of his career ever since.
A resident of Goleta, the father of two, and a faculty member at UCSB for 12 years, Donelan wrote this week’s preview of the Opera Santa Barbara Italian Passions Festival. His forthcoming book on music and poetry, Poetry and the Romantic Musical Aesthetic, will be published by Cambridge University Press in March 2008. When he’s not writing criticism or attending concerts, he can be found in Gersh Park coaching soccer and cheering on his son Jed in Little League.