Neil Ritchie
Neil Ritchie, born in Vancouver, attended high school in West Vancouver and graduated with a degree in commerce from UBC.
He joined the CBC cataloguing records in the library, and after four years became a studio director for CBC radio's Off the Record with Bob Kerr, and Hot Air with Bob Smith. Ritchie, who was with the CBC for thirty years, produced radio shows for the late Otto Lowy, Jurgen Gothe, Paul Grant and the late Alan Aberbach, who persuaded him to teach a class on jazz history in the Seniors Program.
With the experience he had gained working at CBC and a collection of videos and CDs, as well as his knowledge of music gained from playing piano and saxophone, he gave that first class in 1997.
Previously taught:
- Six More Divas (55+)
- The Roaring Twenties: Flappers and Gangsters, Harlem and Paris
- Jazz in a Nutshell: Part 1 (55+)
- Jazz in a Nutshell: Part 2 (55+)
- Jazz Piano (55+)
- Broadway: From Loesser to Lloyd Webber (55+)
- Great Music Icons: From Classical to Pop Music (55+)
- Six Divas (55+)
- The Music of Richard Rodgers (55+)
- The Jazz Singers (55+)
- The Jazz Singers (55+)
- Great Jazz Icons (55+)
- Great Lyricists: The Poets of Tin Pan Alley (55+)
- A Crash Course on Jazz: Big Bands, Instrumentalists, Be-Bop, Cool School, and Great Vocalists (55+)
- Musical Genius: The Life and Music of George Gershwin (55+)
- The Songwriters of Tin Pan Alley (55+)
