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 outspoken pianist is a fearless improviser with a passion for politics. At a concert at Northwestern University, hear her make up a tune on the spot, contrasting the two major presidential candidates in a freewheeling, thoroughly American musical debate. -
In the midst of crisis, music can sometimes mitigate the pain and loss. From powerful pop songs and intimate string quartets to soaring symphonies or singer-songwriters, tell us what you're listening to in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy (and the stress of the election).
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Over centuries of nasty weather, composers have whipped up some impressive orchestral storms of their own. Put on your musical meteorologist cap to identify the symphonic tempests and their authors in this interactive puzzler, which shows low-pressure cells in the concert hall and the opera house.
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Over the centuries, the durable music of J.S. Bach has withstood almost every type of makeover — sounding unscathed on anything from a banjo to a Japanese shamisen. Violinist Gidon Kremer's new album features fresh arrangements of the master's music and new works by 11 contemporary composers.
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As election season sprints to the finish, take a detour to identify some operatic officeholders in an interactive political puzzler. Can you tell an emperor from a senator, a president from a king? Click, listen and test your knowledge of singing politicians.
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John Adams' first opera premiered 25 years ago today at Houston Grand Opera. Not only did Nixon in China bring recent history on stage, it ushered in a wave of operas based on contemporary personalities. Watch an excerpt of the original production, directed by Peter Sellars.
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Another week of peaks and valleys — Indianapolis returns its symphony to the stage, a Cuban ensemble is visiting Pennsylvania and Seattle threatens to strike. Meanwhile, Philly Orchestra players offer to replace a child's missing trombone. It's all the classical music news that's fit to link.
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Hear the celebrated Bach interpreter play the tranquil Partita No. 1 in the NPR studio. Dinnerstein — who burst onto the scene with a popular recording of the Goldberg Variations — phrases her Bach lovingly, taking great care to find the subtle gestures and and ideas in and around the notes.
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The composer-conductor's award-winning Violin Concerto makes a stunning CD debut with violinist and McArthur "genius grant" fellow Leila Josefowicz. The exceptionally vivid music says farewell to the LA Philharmonic, which he led for 17 years and turned into a model of innovation.
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With a new album, Polish pianist Rafał Blechacz proves his multiple wins at the 2005 Chopin Competition were no fluke.
