Tom Huizenga
Tom Huizenga is a producer for NPR Music. He contributes a wide range of stories about classical music to NPR's news programs and is the classical music reviewer for All Things Considered. He appears regularly on NPR Music podcasts and founded NPR's classical music blog Deceptive Cadence in 2010.
Joining NPR in 1999, Huizenga produced, wrote and edited NPR's Peabody Award-winning daily classical music show Performance Today and the programs SymphonyCast and World of Opera.
He's produced live radio broadcasts from the Kennedy Center and other venues, including New York's (Le) Poisson Rouge, where he created NPR's first classical music webcast featuring the Emerson String Quartet.
As a video producer, Huizenga has created some of NPR Music's noteworthy music documentaries in New York. He brought mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato to the historic Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, placed tenor Lawrence Brownlee and pianist Jason Moran inside an active crypt at a historic church in Harlem, and invited composer Philip Glass to a Chinatown loft to discuss music with Devonté Hynes (aka Blood Orange).
He has also written and produced radio specials, such as A Choral Christmas With Stile Antico, broadcast on stations around the country.
Prior to NPR, Huizenga served as music director for NPR member station KRWG, in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and taught in the journalism department at New Mexico State University.
Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Huizenga's radio career began at the University of Michigan, where he produced and hosted a broad range of radio programs at Ann Arbor's WCBN-FM. He holds a B.A. from the University of Michigan in English literature and ethnomusicology.
-
In a time of striving to keep ourselves and our environments pathogen-free, Our Daily Breather seeks guidance on the health of the psyche. Tom Huizenga has been turning to a calming piano performance.
-
The English composer's supernova hit continues to obscure his jaunty, folk inflected St. Paul's Suite. -
Thomas Adès' Concerto for Piano and Orchestra riffs on the old classics while speaking in the distinctive voice of a 21st century master composer. -
A thoughtful musician from a distinguished family, Serkin interpreted the classics and expanded the repertoire by commissioning new works. -
A listener's guide for the opera-curious includes a little history, a little trash-talk and some gorgeous singing. -
When it comes to the Underground Railroad, everyone knows Harriet Tubman. But a new oratorio sheds light on a different, key figure named William Still. -
NPR Music staffers Marissa Lorusso and Tom Huizenga give out superlatives for the best moments in music this past year, including a single breath of operatic singing and an epic guitar solo. -
On her new album, the restless Italian opera star sings virtuoso music composed for Farinelli, the greatest of the baroque castratos. -
The insightful pianist offers a Beethoven bonanza, ranging from the mesmerizing pulse of the popular "Moonlight" Sonata to flashes of wry humor and tender beauty. -
Before any opera purists start wringing their hands, let's remember that the 400-year-old art form has proven itself terrifically adaptable and resilient.
