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 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. -
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. -
The collaborative spirit of Black Mountain College — once home to the likes of John Cage and Willem de Kooning — lives on in a theatrical song cycle performed by the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. -
How do you attract a more diverse audience at the opera? One answer is to produce operas with characters that look more like the general citizenry. -
The contentious presidential election colored the listening habits of NPR's classical producer. -
The charismatic conductor first heard Stravinsky's rambunctious music when he was just 8. Watch him lead the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela live on Thursday night.
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Violence against women, and a smart storyteller from the Arabian Nights, inspired John Adams' "dramatic symphony," featuring violinist Leila Josefowicz.
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Everything about this Mazurka is dreamy, floating along as if Chopin made up the music on the spot in a great opium cloud.
