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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From expressionistic early pieces to picturesque later music inspired by his remote island home, the celebrated musician left a broad, vibrant body of work. -
In this animated video, pianist Michael Mizrahi channels the old Baroque harpsichord in new music written for him by Troy Herion.
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Founded in 2014, this vibrant, new choral group juxtaposes William Byrd's Renaissance classic with newly commissioned inspirations.
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Music director Iván Fischer conducts a Liszt piano concerto with Marc-André Hamelin as soloist, and a powerful wartime symphony by Prokofiev.
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Opera singer Lawrence Brownlee joins jazz pianist Jason Moran in a landmark church to tell a troubling new story with an old spiritual.
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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.
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The one-handed British pianist pours the optimism of a young man at the dawn of his career into a classic Gershwin song.
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With a Strauss waltz, a cheeky take on Strauss and a Beethoven concerto, conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin conjures the sound of old Vienna, once the musical capital of Europe.
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Hear the Paris native merge the oldest instrument, the human voice, with a palette of colorful electronic sounds, applied with a painter's touch.
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As a new year begins, take a quick glance back at some of the notable birthdays, anniversaries, awards, trends and farewells that made 2015 unique in classical music.
