Posts by James Newcomb

January 2020 was when I popped the “proposal” to my wife Sana. You’ll note I didn’t say I “popped the question.” In my mind, it was a done deal, it was simply time to say, “Alright, let’s do this.” We were in our apartment in Vietnam, the moment was seemingly gifted to me from on…

In today’s of the Trumpet Dynamics podcast, hot off the press, player/teacher/author extraordinaire Chris Gekker talks about how the playing of jazz was at one time forbidden in the sacred halls of the Juilliard School. Chris is no spring chicken, we’re talking the 60’s here, and Juilliard has since rectified the issue. But believe it…

This past week Podcast Artistry™ client Ariane Sommer (host of the outstanding Superhumanize podcast which I highly recommend checking out) sent over some material to put into the podcast sausage factory we’ve honed and fine-tuned with a great deal of success and efficiency. Upon downloading the files, entering the interview into the template and giving…

Back when Sana and I met in March 2019, I knew within a very short time that getting her to be my wife was going to be my top priority in life. We had established using WhatsApp as our mode of communication of choice, and I would literally send messages every hour on the hour,…

I just watched a video of an individual playing an orchestral excerpt on the trumpet that every orchestral trumpet player knows and has played a thousand times. What gets me is how he played it with such passion, eyes closed for dramatic effect, as though this performance of it will be truly special. Meanwhile, the…

I wasn’t sure I would make the trip to be honest. My friend Tom Woods is about to publish the 2000th (!) episode of his super popular podcast, The Tom Woods Show. If you don’t know of Tom, he’s a legit rock star in the world of libertarian culture and politics. Which essentially means he’s…

Years ago, I attended and received a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Regent University. What’s funny is that I attended Regent online while living in Hawaii, Kentucky, Georgia, N. Carolina and Korea. And the actual campus is in Virginia Beach, which is my current city of residence and I pass by it all the time.…

I sometimes wonder why I do a weekly podcast focused on trumpet. It’s hardly my main gig these days, and I haven’t had a paying gig in over 2 years. Maybe a lot of trumpeters can say that because of Covid, but that’s a different story. But to do a weekly show on something that…