Christian Lindberg

Christian Lindberg stands out as likely the earliest classical trombonist to build and sustain a thriving full-time career devoted exclusively to solo appearances, and he is now widely viewed as one of the instrument’s preeminent masters. He has simultaneously forged a parallel identity as both conductor and composer.

Born on February 15, 1958, in Djursholm, Sweden, Lindberg came to the trombone relatively late, taking it up at seventeen after encountering recordings by jazz great Jack Teagarden. His training took place at the Royal Stockholm Academy of Music, where Sven Erik Eriksson numbered among his instructors. At nineteen he was appointed principal trombonist of the Royal Opera Orchestra in Stockholm, yet he departed the post after a single season, citing boredom with orchestral routine. Following additional work in Stockholm he relocated to London for study at the Royal College of Music under John Iverson and later pursued lessons in Los Angeles with Ralph Sauer and Roger Bobo.

His solo profile rose rapidly after he captured first prize at the 1981 Nordic Soloists’ Biennale competition. The Henri Tomasi Trombone Concerto served as the vehicle for his formal concert debut in 1984, by which point he had already issued his first recording, The Virtuoso Trombone, on the BIS label in 1983—an association that has continued throughout his career. Lindberg now performs dozens of concerts annually across the globe, has secured numerous major competition victories, conducts frequent lectures and masterclasses, and holds the honorary title of Prince Consort Composer at London’s Royal College of Music.

He has devoted considerable energy to enlarging the trombone repertoire, giving premieres of more than three hundred works—over ninety of them concertos—and producing more than one hundred arrangements or transcriptions. Among the composers who have written for him are Alfred Schnittke, Michael Nyman, and Arvo Pärt. A particularly close collaborator has been Jan Sandström, who composed the Motorbike Concerto for Lindberg, a piece the soloist performs in costume, as he does with several other works.

At Sandström’s urging Lindberg began composing himself; his first substantial effort, Arabenne for trombone and strings, was finished in 1997 and premiered the following year. Since then he has received commissions for more than fifty additional pieces from orchestras worldwide. As a conductor he has appeared regularly with ensembles throughout Europe—especially in Scandinavia—China, Japan, and the Americas. He served as principal conductor of the Nordic Chamber Orchestra from 2004 to 2011, of the Swedish Wind Ensemble from 2005 to 2012, and, beginning in 2009, of the Norwegian Arctic Philharmonic Orchestra. A major undertaking outside these posts has been the Allan Pettersson Project with the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, whose aim is to record all seventeen of Pettersson’s symphonies; the cycle reached Symphony No. 15 in 2022.