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 SymphonyCastand 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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Sometimes it takes an outsider to see a culture clearly. Czech composer Antonin Dvorak's Ninth Symphony was an ode to what American music could become. -
If the celebrated cellist could soundtrack his life, the music would be J.S. Bach's six Cello Suites. Yo-Yo Ma explains why they mean the world to him while he played the music at the NPR offices. -
Abreu began El Sistema in Venezuela in 1975 with fewer than a dozen students — 40 years later, his system has been used throughout the world to unite children through musical education. -
In 1955, a little known Canadian pianist recorded the Goldberg Variations. The album launched Glenn Gould's career and popularized Bach's music. Now the complete recording sessions have been issued. -
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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Pulitzer-winning music critic Tim Page had been good at pretty much everything, until he had a life-threatening traumatic brain injury. He talks with NPR about piecing together a new life. -
Marking the 100th anniversary of An Alpine Symphony, take a guided tour through Strauss' evocative music with conductor Semyon Bychkov and author David Hurwitz as trail guides. -
A skilled mountain climber who knew Tchaikovsky and Brahms, Ethel Smyth was a big personality whose politically charged opera The Wreckers gets its first fully staged production in the U.S. -
From a new concerto by Béla Fleck to established concertos by Béla Bartok, NPR Music's Tom Huizenga and host Jacki Lyden spin a wide variety of new classical recordings. -
From an intriguing East meets West merger to Vivaldi played with velocity, NPR Music's Tom Huizenga and host Jacki Lyden explore a wide range of new classical releases.
