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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Opera and cabaret comingle when two odd bedfellows bring music by Philip Glass, The Bangles, Peter Gabriel and Christoph Willibald Gluck to a "tiny apartment" in Manhattan.
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Discover a broad range of the year's best classical albums, from groundbreaking teenage percussionists and innovative opera singers to fierce orchestral composers and brainy pianists.
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For World Opera Day, watch scenes that will make you fall in love with the art form — from a crazy day at Mozart's diner to a trippy trip to China with Richard Nixon.
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The members of Recap, four young women of color from New Jersey, have built a mission of gender equity into their striking debut album.
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Known primarily for his southern-flavored operas, Floyd helped create an American opera vernacular. His 1955 hit Susannah won the New York Music Critics Circle Award and helped launch his career.
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Classical music fans are mourning the loss of the celebrated mezzo-soprano, known for her versatility and the warmth of her voice. She died at her home in Austria on April 24 at age 93.
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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.
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NPR Music's classical editor traces the high points of a year spent listening to new albums that offered comfort and confrontation in counterpoint with the relentless world outside the headphones.
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The celebrated soprano died suddenly a year ago, leaving her fans, including one NPR producer, in grief, but with many fond memories.
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Broadcast nationwide in 1934 and praised by listeners and critics alike, a masterful symphony soon fell silent. A new recording hopes to help revive an American treasure.