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.
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Alt.Latino host Felix Contreras teams up with NPR classical music maven Tom Huizenga to talk about composers from Mexico, Puerto Rico and Brazil, delighting host Linda Wertheimer.
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When the young composer Tõnu Kõrvits puts a lush, new spin on an old song by one of his compatriots, the long line of singing traditions in Estonia continues unbroken. -
The new music ensemble from New York puts a bold, orchestral spin on that Beatles song you always skip over on the White Album. -
With more than 80 world premieres to her credit, Barbara Hannigan, an intrepid soprano and conductor, has a knack for making modern music sound effortless and approachable. -
The one-handed British pianist pours the optimism of a young man at the dawn of his career into a classic Gershwin song. -
Hear the Paris native merge the oldest instrument, the human voice, with a palette of colorful electronic sounds, applied with a painter's touch. -
From Bach and Dvorak to new confident new composers like Anna Thorvaldsdottir and Andrew Norman, our list feels as wide-ranging, and open to possibilities, as classical music itself. -
Hear a deceptive take on the winter blues by way of a versatile choir, a young New York composer and a 150-year-old poem by Longfellow. -
With minutely detailed instructions from Kiev-born composer Valentin Silvestrov, a British pianist probes the heart of melancholy in music that appears light but weighs heavy. -
Marking the 100th anniversary of An Alpine Symphony, take a guided tour through Strauss' evocative music with conductor Semyon Bychkov and author David Hurwitz as trail guides.
