Neil Diamond: An 80th Birthday Celebration with Cary Ginell

Neil Diamond retired from performing in 2018, but his five-decade career made him one of the world’s most popular concert draws. During his career, Diamond did more than write and perform top 10 songs like “Heartlight” and “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers.”

In this lecture, Cary Ginell, a Grammy-nominated writer and author of 12 books on American music, will take a deeper dive into some of Diamond’s more innovative and creative works.

After a 30-year career in radio, Ginell has spent the last 20 years as a public speaker, talking about music in classrooms, at conferences, and on cruise ships.

Ginell brings a lifelong passion for the recording industry to his work and is one of the world’s foremost authorities on his specialty, Western swing. He is serving as president of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections, an international organization of music scholars and world-renowned institutions. He holds a master’s degree in folklore from University of California, Los Angeles, and a bachelor’s in radio/TV/film from California State University, Northridge.

The Fifty and Better program (FAB) was designed to offer university-level courses (no tests, no homework) taught by experts in the field, and to host social engagement activities for individuals 50 years of age and older in our community. When COVID-19 erupted and the first-ever offering of in-person courses had to be postponed indefinitely, we responded by moving three of the courses to a virtual (online) environment using Zoom.

Cost for the two-hour lecture is $8.

Register

Register by Register by 5 p.m. Monday, Nov. 9.