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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NPR's resident classical music specialist Tom Huizenga previews two of the albums he's looking forward to spending time with in 2021. -
Growing up in a progressive city, Ludwig van Beethoven embraced the ideals of the Enlightenment, the philosophical movement that shook Europe and helped shape the composer's music.
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The beloved pianist was a young lion of his generation until a hand injury forced him to rethink his relationship to music.
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On her new album, Fire in My Mouth, the Pulitzer-winning composer documents the tragedy behind New York City's 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.
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A new recording spotlights the tenacious composer, who was the first African-American woman to have her work performed by a major symphony orchestra.
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A look back at the extraordinary creative souls we lost in 2018, from producer Richard Swift and opera singer Montserrat Caballé to rapper Mac Miller and Aretha Franklin.
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With intense emotions in her voice, the great singer of fado music became the heart and soul of the Portuguese people.
