Jens Lindemann plays 'Smile' amid the rubble of his house in the Pacific Palisades, destroyed by recent wildfires near Los Angeles.
After their house in Pacific Palisades was destroyed during Los Angeles’s recent wildfires, Canadian trumpet virtuoso Jens Lindemann and his wife briefly returned to the remains. Because the area was cordoned off, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers escorted them in for the visit.
Standing on the rubble of his home, the Edmonton native performed an instrumental version of Charlie Chaplin’s melancholy Smile, from the director’s 1936 film Modern Times. His wife, Jennifer Snow, captured it on video.
“I had just enough energy to play that one tune,” Mr. Lindemann says. “I couldn’t stand it any longer. We split 30 seconds later.”
Mr. Lindemann has spent his time since the fire in Arizona preparing for a performance with the Spartanburg Philharmonic in South Carolina on Feb. 15.Supplied
The blue moment was atypical of Mr. Lindemann, a world-class artist known for his high spirits and big personality. Speaking from Scottsdale, Ariz., where he is temporarily located, he seems almost all the way back to his elevated self. What’s helping him is his preparation as the featured guest artist for a performance of Wynton Marsalis’s Trumpet Concerto with the Spartanburg Philharmonic in South Carolina on Feb. 15.
“Concentrating on this has been a saving grace,” the 58-year-old musician and UCLA professor says.
Mr. Lindemann is by himself in a friend’s Arizona home, while his wife is in Newfoundland. He’s practising – “woodshedding,” in the musical parlance – Mr. Marsalis’s 35-minute piece.
“I can’t be around people right now,” he says. “I need to be completely locked away and have no contact with anybody, except for the occasional phone call. But I feel like a student again. It’s actually awesome.”
He’s not alone, exactly. Before he and his wife fled their home, hours before flames overwhelmed it, Mr. Lindemann was able to grab eight of his dozens of horns (and a jacket that fortunately had his Order of Canada pin attached to it). Six of the instruments – a flugelhorn and five trumpets – are in the key of B-flat major. As it happens, the Trumpet Concerto is in that key. He’ll use a different rescued horn for each of the six movements of the piece in Spartanburg.
“It’s a spectacular work,” Mr. Lindemann says of the concerto premiered in 2023 by Michael Sachs, principal trumpet of the Cleveland Orchestra. “The piece is really a tour de force of everything the instrument is capable of.”
The survey includes a traditional fanfare, an homage to Latin music, a French interlude and a blues movement that tests one’s prowess with the trumpet plunger. Practising another movement, Mr. Lindemann says he detects strains of Stravinsky. There’s also a “gorgeous” ballad he’ll perform with a flugelhorn.
Mr. Lindemann was able to grab eight of his musical instruments before fleeing the fire, including a flugelhorn and five trumpets.Jens Lindemann/Supplied
“I told Wynton, ‘I know you wrote it for a trumpet, but I just have to use the flugelhorn for that movement,’” Mr. Lindemann says. “Like the great Guido Basso, you know?”
Mr. Basso, who died in 2023, was a noted Canadian flugelhornist (and trumpet player).
Typically, a soloist would not address an audience with anything more than a bow during a concert with an orchestra. In Spartanburg, however, Mr. Lindemann will speak on stage about the wildfires and loss, but – above all – empathy.
“The concerto is important to me because it allows me to help heal a catastrophic situation. But to tell my story to an audience will remind them of the importance of why humanity is drawn together. This wildfires incident has created a tremendous amount of empathy with anybody who hears from anyone who has suffered because of it. My situation gives me a platform to talk about so many others who have lost everything, and it would be an incredible missed opportunity not to use it with this piece. And not only in Spartanburg, but every time I perform it in the future.”
The trumpeter says he and his wife are living their lives in “chunks,” moving from one accommodation to another offered to them by friends: “We will not have a home for a year and a half, maybe two.”
Canadian trumpeter Jens Lindeman's home in Pacific Palisades was destroyed in the wildfires that raged through Los Angeles. When returning to see the remains of his home, Mr. Lindeman performed an instrumental version of Charlie Chaplin’s Smile, from the director’s 1936 film Modern Times.HO/The Canadian Press
The choice to play Smile among the ruins of his home in L.A. was made on the spur of the moment. The sombre melody carries poignant words of modest encouragement: “When there are clouds in the sky, you’ll get by if you smile through your fear and sorrow …”
The line sums up where Mr. Lindemann is at right now. “Being there was about as soul-crushing as it could be,” he says. “But even though it’s a sad song, there’s a happy ending to it, somewhere. I just don’t know when.”
Hear Jens Lindemann play different pieces of music on several of his instruments.