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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Now that we've avoided a financial cataclysm, here's a suitable playlist for some of the swirling emotions of the past two weeks. -
On the bicentennial of the composer's birth, his music seems keenly suited to our triumphs and our failures. His operas may star dukes, prostitutes or court jesters, but they are all packed with vital insights into human nature.
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Don't know your Traviata from your Trovatore or your Otello from your Aida? Try out this handy cheat sheet — with music — to explore the greatest of Italian composers on the centennial of his birth. Hear his music and learn the unlikely story of his rise from a small town to international renown.
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To mark the bicentennial of Giuseppe Verdi's birth, one of today's preeminent sopranos spins her favorite music by the master opera composer.
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In his new tribute album, pianist Antonio Pompa-Baldi finds common ground between two odd bedfellows — composer Francis Poulenc and singer Edith Piaf. Their connection, he says, is the powerful way they expressed emotions through the beautiful melodies in their songs.
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From a new concerto by Béla Fleck to established concertos by Béla Bartok, NPR Music's Tom Huizenga and host Jacki Lyden spin a wide variety of new classical recordings.
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Mesmerized by the Caruso records he heard on the streets of lower Manhattan as a poor kid, Richard Tucker took to singing and never looked back. New York honors its native son with arias and corned beef.
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Watch the violinist play music of the spheres amid twinkling lights with jazz bassist Ben Allison. Hope ponders the cosmos, bringing together music and time, with works from different centuries.
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Conductor David Robertson decodes America's orchestral anxieties, from nurturing new works to playing the classics. "I'm seen by many people as having horns and a forked tail," he says, "because I actually love to discover something that has not been played before."
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An American singer began her long career as a soprano in her home country, then thrived as a mezzo in Europe. She also directed opera and documentary film, working with both her husband and son. She died in her native New York.
