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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Carl Nielsen could have used a little more luck after he composed stunningly original music for a theatrical version of the Aladdin story. The director cut and jumbled the score. But in the end, the Danish composer rescued his music by turning it into a popular suite.
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Before Easter, hear five powerful and diverse musical portrayals of Jesus' last days and crucifixion, from Bach's monumental St. Matthew to Golijov's brilliant Latin American mashup to a dark and terrifying Russian vision from Sofia Gubaidulina. -
With its bright beat and direct quote from The Star Spangled Banner, Edwin Bagley's National Emblem march is an American favorite — that almost made the trash bin.
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The mezzo-soprano with the smoky, sultry voice defined Carmen for generations — and earned Hollywood fame at the prime of her career. Stevens died Wednesday at 99.
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The idea of transforming the children's song "Frère Jacques" into a funeral march was both creepy and ingenious, making Gustav Mahler's very first symphony a bold game changer.
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New albums of music by the "Three Bs" prove that going back to the basics has its advantages. Hear a sweet-toned violin concerto, an audacious piano sonata and a solo cello suite caressed by a lute.
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If you fell in love with oranges, would you scour the world to find them? Prokofiev's absurdist, citrus-scented opera features zany plot lines, curious characters and one little march that made it big.
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London's Covent Garden opera house hosted a debate Monday about the barriers between opera and ballet and the people. What's your opinion?
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In an art form notorious for its excesses, Verdi's Aida can take the bigger-is-better approach to nearly laughable extremes. But its grand "Triumphal March" is built on a simple foundation.
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In Hector Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, brass snarl and winds shriek like feral beasts in an opium-fueled dream of passion, murder and execution by guillotine.
