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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The award is granted once every four years to a pianist with exceptional qualities, chosen by a secretive committee. This time, a young Polish musician who specializes in Chopin has earned the generous $300,000 prize. -
As a young girl in Vietnam, Van-Anh Vanessa Vo wanted to be a traditional musician although it was a world dominated by men. She pestered a master teacher for three years before he finally gave in.
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A beloved conductor made a triumphant return, an opera singer took a stand and Walt Disney was reanimated by Philip Glass. It was quite a year in classical music, which also brought the closing of a prominent opera company and the continued silence of a major orchestra.
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A guide to some of the most beautiful, thought-provoking and inspiring releases from the year gone by — from luminous choral singing to thunderous percussion to smart violin solos.
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It's been a banner year for classical box sets. Deceptive Cadence hosts Anastasia Tsioulcas and Tom Huizenga tell us why and choose a few of their favorites.
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The intrepid champions of new music from around the world bring a lullaby, some rare blues and a recent work by The National's Bryce Dessner to the offices of NPR Music.
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If you simplified the last 100 years of music as a war between atonal and lyrical forces, Penderecki would be on the front lines of battle. Discover the great Polish composer's haunting, viscerally dramatic music in a Penderecki primer.
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Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas welcomes recent MacArthur "Genius Grant" recipient Jeremy Denk to the piano as part of a far-reaching program. Hear Viennese classics, as well as bold American works.
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In his new book, conductor John Eliot Gardiner searches for clues to uncover what the great composer's life and personality were really like. He finds a man full of contradictions and unfathomable music — even "a great guy to go out and have a beer with."
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From pulsing techno to alluring ambient, hear what happens when two seemingly opposite musical realms collide on the dance floor and in the chill room. Hear a techno take on Carmina Burana and more.
