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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Best known in the U.S. as a longtime music critic of The New Yorker, Porter was also a scholar, translator and director of opera. -
The a cappella quartet, known for luminous interpretations of medieval pieces, teams up with folk musician Bruce Molsky in music from more modern times — popular songs from the Civil War era.
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Claiming total freedom in sound and color — and making outrageous pronouncements — the tough-minded composer and conductor charted a new course for classical music.
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With secular texts, soaring vocals and electronics, Mazzoli twists the traditional vesper prayer service to reflect our high-tech times.
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A British choral group, known for its incandescent sound, reveals bells and sunlight in the Estonian composer's Nunc dimittis.
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The venturesome duo plays visionary Beethoven, heartbreaking Janáček and a piece by Philip Glass that unfolds like a lullaby.
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There are plenty of single men in opera, but would you really want to date them? Try separating the dudes from the duds in this puzzler.
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A young tenor from New Orleans elegantly launches high Cs in a stirring but punishingly difficult Rossini aria. This is why we listen to opera!
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The bitter suffering and voluptuous lyricism of Bach's St. Matthew Passion are channeled with empathy by a popular piano duo.
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Minimalism reaches back to its ancient roots when a vibrant young chamber orchestra shares six minutes of mesmerizing sunshine by Steve Reich.
