Melinda Whiting
Classical HostMelinda has worked in radio for decades, hosting and producing classical music and arts news. An award-winning broadcaster, she has created and hosted classical music programs and reported for NPR, WQXR—New York, WHYY–Philadelphia, and American Public Media. WRTI listeners may remember her years hosting classical music for WFLN and WHYY.
Currently the host of The Philadelphia Orchestra In Concert on WRTI, Melinda has in the past served as the national radio voice of the New York Philharmonic and the Saint Louis Symphony. For many years she was a frequent host, producer, and editor on the daily public radio music program Performance Today. She also produced a national concert series from the Marlboro Music Festival.
While continuing her radio career, Melinda was editor in chief of Symphony, the bimonthly magazine of the League of American Orchestras. During her tenure, the magazine won several ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards for excellence in music journalism. She then took a hiatus from the airwaves while serving the Curtis Institute of Music as vice president for communications and senior editor.
Trained as a singer, Melinda also performed professionally for many years with early music ensembles and chamber choirs in New York, Washington, and Philadelphia. She is a member of the board of directors of the Theodore Presser Foundation and formerly served on the board of Network for New Music, as an officer of the Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia, and a member of the Diocesan Council of the Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey.
Melinda returned to radio at WRTI in Spring 2017 and has served as WRTI’s midday host since 2021.
Hear Melinda as host of Classical Weekdays on WRTI-FM, weekdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and as host of The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert, Sundays from 1 to 3 p.m. on WRTI-FM and Mondays from 7 to 9 p.m. on WRTI HD-2.
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Two exciting soloists, British cello sensation Sheku Kanneh-Mason and South African soprano Pretty Yende, join The Philadelphia Orchestra in a program of Haydn and Mahler, alongside a world premiere by Xi Wang. -
Clarinetist Ricardo Morales and violist Choong-Jin Chang shine in Max Bruch's Concerto for Clarinet, Viola, and Orchestra in E Minor, on a program that also features Dvořák’s beloved Symphony No. 9.
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Join us on Sunday, Feb. 26 at 1 p.m. on WRTI 90.1 and Monday, Feb. 27 at 7 p.m. on WRTI HD-2 as The Philadelphia Orchestra in Concert brings you a program of Brahms, Holst, and Missy Mazzoli from the 2022/2023 season.
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Nicholas McGegan conducts The Philadelphia Orchestra in a program of Johann Sebastian Bach, George Friederic Handel and Jean-Fery Rebel, with featured organist Paul Jacobs.
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Italian pianist Beatrice Rana joins The Philadelphia Orchestra and music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin to perform Clara Schumann's Piano Concerto, on a program with Florence Price's Third Symphony and Ravel's orchestral suite 'Le Tombeau de Couperin.'
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In a program spanning Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night, and selections from Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni, the common denominator is love.
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Join us as The Philadelphia Orchestra, with guest conductor William Eddins and featured soloist Hilary Hahn, deliver a program of Debussy, Tchaikovsky, and Coleridge-Tayler Perkinson.
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For the first time since 2020, The Philadelphia Orchestra presents its beloved MLK Tribute Concert at historic Girard College Chapel. WRTI will broadcast this special concert live, on Monday at 3 p.m.
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Music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin leads The Philadelphia Orchestra in waltzes by Ravel and Strauss, and rising-star violinist Randall Goosby performs two concertos by composer Florence Price.
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Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts Valerie Coleman’s Umoja: Anthem for Unity and Dvořák's Symphony No. 8. In between, pianist Daniil Trifonov is featured in Franz Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1.
