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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On the 300th anniversary of his birth, hear how music by Johann Sebastian's son Carl Philipp Emanuel bridged the gap between the old-fashioned Baroque and newfangled music by Haydn and Mozart. -
The composer's operas for TV completely rethought the structures of the old European model for a new generation.
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On his new album, the 29-year-old violinist finds connections between two seemingly disparate concertos by Jean Sibelius and Thomas Adès.
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For Valentine's Day, get to know pairs of lovebirds making beautiful music together. "It's always nice to be onstage and get a little alone time — even if there's an orchestra of a hundred and an audience of 2000," says conductor David Robertson, who is married to pianist Orli Shaham.
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The opera, by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Charles Wuorinen, is streaming for free for the next 90 days. Its libretto is by Annie Proulx, who wrote the original short story.
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In this year's Grammy Awards, the classical music was as new as the pop. A jazz composer and a soprano captured multiple prizes, while the Academy recognized a performances by an adventurous American orchestra and a compelling young vocal group. See the full list of classical winners.
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Both the band and the piano superstar know a thing or two about shredding. Perhaps these odd bedfellows have more in common than meets the ear.
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One of the great post-World War II conductors, Abbado had a searching musical intellect that he employed in orchestral and operatic music from Mozart to Verdi to contemporary composers.
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One diva brought another to the screen in this week's episode of the celebrated drama. New Zealand native Dame Kiri Te Kanawa appeared as her predecessor Dame Nellie Melba, an Australian singer in high demand in the years before and After World War I. Hear the real Melba in a signature role.
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The famed mezzo-soprano has battled conductors, cancer and the rapid-fire music of Rossini and always comes out on top. Today, she devotes her time to helping young singers find their voices.
