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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The city of Chicago has one more thing to boast about: Its hometown orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, has been named America's top orchestra in a new critics' poll published in the venerable British magazine Gramophone.
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The Beaux Arts Trio, with founder Menahem Pressler, will play its final U.S. concert at the Tanglewood Music Festival on Thursday night, 53 years after the group got its start there. The farewell performance will stream live at NPR.org.
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Karajan shot to the top of the classical music scene in the 1950s, remaining supremely powerful until he died in 1989. He left a legacy of gorgeous recordings, as well as a fair amount of controversy. -
Imagine a grand piano with the top removed. Armed with fishing line, plumbing tape and Popsicle sticks, 10 musicians lean over the innards of the instrument and play the bowed piano. -
She smokes and drinks and brings men to their knees just by crooning a breathy Habanera. She's Carmen, the supreme diva of operatic femmes fatales, the controversial heroine of Bizet's popular opera. -
The opera star died 30 years ago. But you'd hardly know she was gone, judging from the steady stream of releases from her record company. It's a testament to the lasting appeal of a great artist. -
With his free-ringing high notes and his immense fame, the singer brought opera into the lives of millions of people worldwide. He embodied the idea of the "Italian tenor" with passion, charisma and a firm, fresh voice.
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Beverly Sills, world-renowned opera singer, died from lung cancer at the age of 78. With a silvery voice that soared high, and an irrepressible personality, Sills became an opera superstar.
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The soprano, known for her lustrous voice and irrepressible personality, has died. She's remembered for her roles on stage and as a successful, media-savvy arts administrator and advocate. -
The political identity of composer Dmitri Shostakovich has been a topic of debate for decades.
