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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We can thank Alfred Hitchcock for giving new life to Charles Gounod's quirky little march about dueling puppets, funeral processions and a few refreshing cocktails. -
Van Cliburn competition winners remember the great pianist, who died last month at age 78. See silver medalist Joyce Yang play for Cliburn — and his unforgettably moving response.
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With a reputation for conservative views, the pontiff's musical tastes run, not surprisingly, straight down the center of the meat and potatoes repertoire.
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Sometimes real-life stories are so operatic you couldn't make them up. Could Dominique Strauss-Kahn's fall from grace make a compelling opera?
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For centuries composers have written love letters, but not by scratching words on paper. Their language is music. Hear five passionate outpourings by the likes of Mahler, Janáček and Peter Lieberson.
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From Christopher Purves' bottomless bass voice and the soaring Sibelius Fifth to a violist's new take on the Baroque, it's this week's list of albums we can't stop listening to.
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Hear eighth blackbird play Grammy winning music by Stephen Hartke. And the hosts of Deceptive Cadence team up to examine the classical winners at the 55th Grammy Awards, from two very belated Lifetime Achievement honors to the nonsense of the "Classical Compendium" category.
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Max Richter grew tired of Vivaldi's warhorse The Four Seasons. But instead of writing off the piece forever, Richter rewrote it. He blended Vivaldi's work with his own music.
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What is it about choral music that hits on such a basic human level? The answer may be found in this performance by Cantus, the male a cappella ensemble from Minnesota, which sings three widely divergent songs from the heart.
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Poulenc wrote music that popped like corks from Champagne, dizzy with the sounds of Parisian music halls and jazz. Yet he also channeled great emotional depth and spirituality.
