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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For World Opera Day, watch scenes that will make you fall in love with the art form — from a crazy day at Mozart's diner to a trippy trip to China with Richard Nixon. -
Like singing in close harmony, a pair of guitars intertwine, finishing each other's phrases with radiant transparency in Ravel's magic garden.
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The members of Recap, four young women of color from New Jersey, have built a mission of gender equity into their striking debut album. -
Hear the young mezzo-soprano sing contemporary music of rare beauty, offering a voice of creamy muscularity.
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Four young women of color founded the percussion quartet Recap in 2020. Their debut album is anchored by Hedera, a mesmerizing work for drums and voice.
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Known primarily for his southern-flavored operas, Floyd helped create an American opera vernacular. His 1955 hit Susannah won the New York Music Critics Circle Award and helped launch his career. -
Still a crowd-pleaser after 300 years.
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For a taste of the pianist's technique, here's a lighter mood from Shostakovich that sparkles with interlocking inner voices that ripple as clear as a mountain stream.
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On his new album, Mozart & Contemporaries, the deep-thinking pianist from Iceland aims to debunk the image of Amadeus as the giggling savant by contrasting his music with that of his peers. -
With bold harmonies, pointillist texture and winding rhythms, Ólafsson's composition offers — in less than two minutes — a distinctly modern sound that looks toward the future.
