Posts by James Newcomb

A post from June 2016 showed up on my Facebook account today when I did a search for something seemingly unrelated. But it struck me as something worth resharing all these years later, and just as relevant IMO. What follows is what I posted in June 2016: “In the event you’re inclined to think the TSA…

When I was a child and young adult, I heard many variations of my last name, Newcomb. You can see that the name contains the word “nuke”; not in the spelling but in the pronunciation.  People used to poke fun of my name for that very reason. If something got “nuked” in the microwave, all…

Today’s email is me shamelessly gushing over my wife, Sana.  If you’ve followed this email newsletter for any length of time, you know that Sana recently arrived in the US after a very long time processing her visa.  3 months after her arrival, she got the hankering to get out of the house and find…

When Tony Prisk, second trumpet with the Philadelphia Orchestra, told me about some of his colleague’s attitude about their day job (in the most recent installment of the Trumpet Dynamics podcast, which you can access here ) I thought he was joking.  How could a person devote their entire life from childhood to excelling at a craft,…

Interesting story for you. In May 2021, my wife Sana and I were riding in a taxi from our apartment to a mall in Hanoi, Vietnam for a relaxing Saturday lunch and stroll through the mall.  I had been active playing trumpet for pretty much my entire life, yet the trajectory of my professional career…

Good evening, Short email for you, kind of a “proof of life” if you will. We ended up having an extremely busy week, as we apartment-shopped, packed up out of one house and moved into another one in the space of less than 72 hours. More than 24 hours of recovery time was needed for both mind and body,…

It’s no secret that performance anxiety is a problem for a lot of people.  I’m not necessarily referring to musical performances; far more than that. I’m talking about everyday encounters where we’re forced to choose between saying what’s on our minds or conforming with the norms established by the Gatekeepers of Polite Society. That adrenaline…

I type this email on my iPhone exactly 18 minutes prior to midnight EST on Dec 31, 2022. And although I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions, it’s interesting to reflect on the past 12 months to think about what went right, what went wrong, and what just went.  In 2022, I traveled between Virginia…