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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In music from Giuseppe Verdi to Jennifer Higdon, celebrate the sound of the venturesome Atlanta Symphony Orchestra while it's silenced by a bitter labor dispute. -
Three centuries ago, Domenico Scarlatti churned out 555 keyboard sonatas. Today, pianists, harpsichordists and even accordionists still can't get enough. Hear a clutch of new recordings. -
One hundred years after the start of World War I, hear a range of pop and classical music from artists of the era. Some music reflects the war's violence, some gives solace. -
In the tradition of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, composers from Japan, Armenia and the U.S. paint colorful pictures by posing soloists in front of orchestras. -
The Estonian composer's contemplative yet powerful music has found popularity beyond the borders of classical music. He's making a rare appearance in the U.S. to attend a festival of his music. -
After nearly 30 years, 20 albums and countless concerts, the acclaimed vocal ensemble has announced the 2015-16 season will be its last. Hear a preview of the group's forthcoming album love fail. -
Sample a trio of new vocal albums ranging from a blistering Beethoven Mass to ancient Russian Orthodox traditions and an opulent but overlooked opera from the dawn of the 20th century. -
On the 300th anniversary of his birth, hear how music by Johann Sebastian's son Carl Philipp Emanuel bridged the gap between the old-fashioned Baroque and newfangled music by Haydn and Mozart. -
The composer's operas for TV completely rethought the structures of the old European model for a new generation. -
One of the great post-World War II conductors, Abbado had a searching musical intellect that he employed in orchestral and operatic music from Mozart to Verdi to contemporary composers.
