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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Discover a broad spectrum of this year's most compelling classical music, from booby-trapped string quartets and chilled-out piano to full-throttle percussion, electric guitars and high-flying vocals. -
Failure was not an option when Léon arrived in New York, a determined 24-year-old pianist from Cuba. At nearly 80, she says some things haven't changed.
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Watch the rising young cellist transform a Bob Marley classic, explore brand new preludes and unspool a weepy Welsh ballad.
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If you could hire a composer to score your dreams, Evgueni Galperine just might be your man.
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Hear what's been called "America's most astonishing choir" sing brand new music by Shara Nova that looks at how we handle difficult emotions.
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Hear vocalist and composer Shara Nova in a mesmerizing moment from a new song cycle, The Blue Hour, written by five celebrated women.
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As the new concert season gets underway, composers and orchestra administrators say they are feeling a shift in whose music gets heard.
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New to the music of Steve Reich? His latest recording, featuring the Los Angeles Philharmonic, may be his most approachable.
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Hear the acclaimed classical singer put an exquisite twist on a deep cut from the troubled singer-songwriter Connie Converse.
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The Pulitzer-winning, MacArthur "genius" co-founder of Bang on a Can looks for the grit in music, whether she's writing a string quartet or one of her history-based oratorios.
