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 versatile Attacca Quartet offers a funhouse of musical trap doors in a piece by the Pulitzer-winning composer Caroline Shaw.
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Hear one of the intrepid violinist's 22 commissioned works, focusing on the harrowing year that was 2020.
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From sexist professors and low self-esteem to worldwide acclaim, the Finnish composer talks about her path to success and her relentless pursuit of sound. -
The Mivos Quartet offers a new, colorful piece by Henry Threadgill and music by Robert Honstein inspired by the shimmering light at the Arctic Circle.
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Hear the towering – and polarizing – author in conversation about his 4,000-page book, The Oxford History of Western Music.
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Watch a world premiere performance of choral songs built on texts from important Washington women, from Kamala Harris and Condoleezza Rice to Eleanor Roosevelt, Elena Kagan and Abigail Adams.
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With only her voice as an instrument, the Japanese singer conjures a world of sound and color, with operatic élan.
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Georgetown University owes its survival to slavery. A new album by Carlos Simon, an assistant professor at the school, unflinchingly confronts that legacy.
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In music of translucent constancy, the Pulitzer-winning composer finds philosophical questions — and comfort — in the Old Testament.
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The Los Angeles-based band refurbishes an enigmatic, but entrancing piece by the late Julius Eastman, whose music is enjoying a well-deserved resurgence.
