V-JAM Philly Session Leader: WRTI

For the rest of April, Tuesday through Saturday, we’ll publish profiles of artists who have called Philadelphia home, while WRTI celebrates their music on the air.

WRTI jazz hosts will be spinning our highlighted artists as well as other local jazz warriors, past and present, as we wait out this storm and look forward to supporting live performances in the future.

“We at WRTI are thrilled to partner with Jazz Philadelphia to celebrate some of the best jazz artists in the world during this Jazz Appreciation Month,” says Maureen Malloy, WRTI Jazz Music Director. “We are so lucky to have such talent in our local communities. Right now, they need us, we need them, and we all need some great jazz to lift our spirits and heal our souls.”

WRTI was founded in 1948 as a campus-limited AM radio station at Temple University. The station was originally intended to be a student laboratory, and its call letters – RTI – stand for “Radio Technical Institute.” The station later adopted an all-jazz format from 1969 to 1997 when it split its programming format to include classical music during the day and jazz at night after Philadelphia’s classical music radio station, WFLN, was sold. Today over 300,000 listeners tune to WRTI each week on the radio with additional options to listen online through 24-hour web streams, Internet radio, or a WRTI Mobile App.

For 72 years, WRTI’s mission has been to champion music as a vital cultural resource and we feel lucky to call them partners in V-JAM. Tune in on the radio, or at wrti.org.