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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Don't know neo-nationalism from neoclassicism? Bone up on the surprisingly multifaceted career of Igor Stravinsky, the man who gave us the iconic Rite of Spring. -
The composer, who never fit into any particular school of composition, will be remembered for a relatively small quantity of perfectly realized, richly textured works created for some of the 20th century's leading virtuosos.
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For the 200 anniversary of Richard Wagner's birth, William Berger, author of Wagner Without Fear, guides us through five of his favorite Wagner moments — musical episodes that keep the composer's extraordinary dramas in our lives today.
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Try rummaging through opera to find a tender scene between a mother and child and you'll come up stymied. Why are so many operatic moms depicted as murderous women on the verge of a nervous breakdown?
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The young Ingolf Wunder shines in Mozart, Jorge Federico Osorio reintroduces a Mexican classic and Elisveta Blumina reveals the gentle side of Valentine Silvestrov in three compelling new piano recordings.
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What impressed most about Colin Davis wasn't his extraordinarily broad view of music and art, his eloquent turns of phrase, or even his naughty sense of humor, but it was instead something less tangible — his sense of self.
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After a week on the town, with visits to the White House, the Opera House and Ben's Chili Bowl, NPR Music's Diva-in-Residence (and cardboard cut-out) makes her way to our brand-new headquarters.
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In a recent lecture on the arts, the eclectic cellist made a plea for the power of diversity. When artists from divergent disciplines commingle, Ma says, it creates a "time and space for transformation."
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From the radiant voices of a Latvian choir to a fresh young string quartet and a seasoned symphony, NPR's Tom Huizenga and host Jacki Lyden spin an eclectic mix of new classical releases.
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Hear one of America's finest young pianists and an emerging English string quartet play music by visionary composer Robert Schumann, as well as music by Mozart and artists Schumann influenced.
