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 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. -
Although his music is popular, Strauss remains an enigma to some and a polarizing figure for others. To mark the composer's sesquicentennial, here's a puzzler to test know-it-alls and tempt newbies.
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Like brides and grooms, wedding songs come in all varieties. Test your smarts with this smorgasbord of matrimonial music.
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Watch the celebrated pianist play Bach's Two-part Inventions, which can zing with the speed of a sewing machine, or unfold slowly like a gentle aria.
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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.
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Hear evocative music about fallen heroes — from a symphony by the son of a Civil War bandsman to a song honoring a young Marine from Alabama.
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In Elizabethan England, it was hip to have the blues. Watch the British countertenor mine the art of John Dowland's melancholy songs. He's joined by Thomas Dunford, "the Eric Clapton of the lute."
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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.
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Mothers in opera tend to be, well, operatic — stressed, dramatic, expressive. Try identifying the manic moms in this Mother's Day puzzler.
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There's something to please everyone — from Schubert in the Hudson Valley, great orchestras in in the Rockies and world premieres in a Chicago park.
