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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Routinely labeled an "American maverick," Harrison lovingly brought Eastern traditions and the rugged American West together in his music, blazing new paths and constructing his own instruments. -
Recent surveys show that less than 2 percent of music performed by American orchestras is by women composers. This year's Pulitzer Prize winner, Du Yun, speaks out on diversity in the concert hall. -
The beloved actor and comedian will debut a new show with cellist Jan Vogler where he sings Gershwin and recites Whitman. There's a little Schubert and Bach on the side. -
Naturalist and author Lyanda Lynn Haupt took her research on Mozart to a whole new level when she invited a young starling into her home. -
Hear music both bleak and magisterial by an Icelandic composer and engineer who wields darkness into a singularly mesmerizing art.
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The opera, by the 39-year-old Shanghai native, is a searing parable of human trafficking set to a score that ranges from Renaissance choral music to punk rock. -
NPR's Audie Cornish speaks with NPR Music Senior Editor Jacob Ganz and NPR's classical music producer, Tom Huizenga, about the winner of the Pulitzer Prize in music, the newest inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and rapper Kanye West going platinum for his latest album.
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The anonymous song from 17th-century Iceland sports a catchy, bittersweet melody that pop outfits like Peter, Bjorn and John might be happy to whistle. Arve Henriksen joins the vocal trio on trumpet. -
Despite a misleading article, the beloved soprano makes it clear that she's nowhere near ready to give up the opera stage. -
The genre-busting composer, who believes in classical music's "multi-dimensional space," brings a strikingly diverse playlist with him for a relaxed session of spinning tunes and talking music.
