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 classical guitarist offers a mesmerizing East meets West collision, teaming up with a family of Indian musicians who play the sarod, a darker-toned cousin of the sitar. -
From plumbing pipes and rice bowls to vibraphones and one big bass drum, Sandbox Percussion makes mesmerizing music that you have to see to believe. -
The soprano and her pianist husband offer a deeply considered look at the human condition through seven distinct songs. -
The famed Frenchman brings all his elegance and colorful playing to music by Ravel, Brahms and Villa-Lobos. -
The 88-year-old composer, who talks as fast as the interlocking phrases of his music, looks back on crucial moments in a career that moved minimalism into the mainstream. -
One of the first modern women composers to reach international acclaim, Gubaidulina wrote bold music, inspired by Eastern and Western philosophies, and the joy of sound itself. -
On his new album, the British keyboardist offers both engaging and entertaining contemporary works for the misunderstood instrument. -
Something kind of miraculous takes place when teenagers take over the Tiny Desk. Their astounding performances confirm a bright forecast for the future of music. -
The rising star of the British Kanneh-Mason family offers vigorous Chopin, serene Liszt and a stirring spiritual at the trusty Tiny Desk upright piano. -
NPR Music's classical expert is an omnivorous listener, who treated the music of 2024 as sustenance for a year of zigzagging emotional highs and lows.
