Behind Duane Funderburk and his wife’s Altadena house, past the french doors and through the trees, stood a studio they had built themselves. It was a haven where Funderburk often played his grand piano, a Yamaha he bought in 1982.

“It had the most incredibly strong lower end – the bass notes of that piano were phenomenal,” said Funderburk, an artist-in-residence at Lake Avenue church in Pasadena.

Funderburk would open his windows and doors and neighbors would listen from their yards.

“‘Duane! Play some Bach!’” he recalled them saying. “And so I would play some Bach. And they would say: ‘Duane, can you play Happy Birthday? It’s my mother’s birthday today, she’s here.’”

For more than 30 years, this was his family’s musical sanctuary. This month, it became one of the thousands of structures destroyed in Los Angeles’s historic fires. The piano fell through the floor; all that was left was its frame and a few broken strings.

“It’s a bit dramatic,” Funderburk said.

In a city known for its creative output, the fires ravaged two neighborhoods musicians called home on opposite ends of Los Angeles. The fires affected high-profile performers as well as dozens of working musicians, destroying the instruments and home studios essential to their craft.

“We’re tradesmen, we’re craftspeople, we have extensive workshops in our home,” said Paul Bryan, a music producer, recording and mixing engineer and longtime bassist for Aimee Mann, who lost his home, studio and a number of vintage instruments including a 19th-century Steinway piano and tape relay keyboards – what he calls “musical cuckoo clocks” – in the Palisades fire. “To me, the difference between us and a carpenter is – and this might be a bit esoteric – I feel like our tools contain magic. They’re like talismans.”

He said he felt “like a steward” for the instruments: “They’re not mine to own necessarily, but mine to look after and take care of.”

Amid the losses, the community has rallied. A spreadsheet of musicians who lost houses is circulating. The FireAid benefit concerts, scheduled for 30 January, will feature musicians such as Sting, Rod Stewart and Joni Mitchell. Groups such as the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund are offering grants to affected musicians.

Aric Steinberg, executive director of the fund, said the losses were unlike anything he had ever seen.

Musicians hadn’t just lost sentimental items, he said – they often rely on multiple streams of income, including working as composers, teachers and live performers.

“This is a very common scenario that a musician does many, many different things. And it’s very, very rare that all of those things go away at the same time,” Steinberg said. “It’s a shocking and sudden life change that nobody is really prepared to deal with.”

Musicians on their losses

In some ways, the story of LA’s catastrophic fires can be told through the musical items left behind: instruments and scores, marked up by a career’s worth of teachers, friends and notes from performances.

“You write those things in and you’ve got those things that you can refer to,” Funderburk said. “And when you lose that, a part of you is gone.”

The losses range from the personal to the historic, including the 1928 Steinway from the MGM scoring stage where The Wizard of Oz was recorded.

“It just was a beautiful piano that inspired me every time I put my hands on it, and I prayed when I sat at it, and I played and I did finger exercises and I wrote music, and it was just like a partner to me,” said Starr Parodi, a composer and producer who bought the piano when she was working on the Arsenio Hall Show. “I probably would have wanted to keep that more than my house, honestly.”

Before she left her Palisades house, Parodi played the piano one last time.

“I just played it for a few minutes, a few chords and stuff, and just put my hands on it,” she said. “And then I just ran out.”

Charlie Bisharat, a studio violinist whose long list of credits includes work with John Williams, Jane’s Addiction and awards shows such as the Grammys and Oscars, tried to fend off the fire from his Palisades home.

When he saw plumes of smoke, he grabbed his computer, passport and French violin his dad bought for him when he was 10. The violin is more than 100 years old.

“It’s been a good companion. We’ve had a lot of great musical experiences,” he said.

But his other possessions, including a Yamaha grand piano and photographs, burned with the house.

“I’m never going to be able to show anything to my grandkids of my life. Nothing. I don’t have one thing in my history,” he said. “I was in the marching band at USC and I had a letterman jacket from that and just kind of little silly mementoes that remind you of your past.”

He still feels he got lucky.

“I just had to give up my house and nobody was hurt. In a way, it’s kind of philosophical,” he said.

The composer Juhi Bansal had been working on a commission for The Thirteen choir and orchestra in Washington DC that touched on themes about immigrant experiences, with texts from records at Ellis Island. Bansal, who was writing with pencil and paper, lost the piece in the Eaton fire. Starting over in a friend’s house with only early sketches on her phone, she reflected on a lyric: “with all our possessions on our backs.”

“ I’m trying to work on this project and, like, trying to not get lost in how overwhelming that feels,” she said.

For many, the work itself is a reminder of what’s lost, but also what’s left.

“Honestly, it is everything,” said Jake Viator, a mastering engineer for Stones Throw Records whose house burned in the Eaton fire. “It’s somehow all I have in terms of, when you lose everything, they can’t take the thoughts or feelings out of your head and I think that’s where music comes in.”

David O, musical director for Broadway’s Mr Saturday Night, lost his home in the Eaton fire, including a career’s worth of instruments, scores and photographs. In the past few weeks, he’s sat down at other pianos and improvised.

“I find that I can’t sit and play for more than a couple minutes without the tears just coming and they just don’t stop. And also at the same time, I’m extremely grateful to be able to be alive and still play,” he said.

‘What does the future look like?’

As musicians contemplate rebuilding in Altadena, a less affluent area than the Palisades, fears of gentrification loom. Rising prices could push out the artists who have long defined the neighborhood’s character.

“I think artists can’t afford that and I think this unique blending of people, I’m afraid, will not stay because I don’t think they’re going to be able to stay,” Funderburk said.

Some mentioned the possibility of rebuilding homes and studios and replacing gear. But the neighborhood – and Los Angeles – could be irrevocably changed, said Griffin Goldsmith, drummer for the band Dawes, who lost his home in the Eaton fire.

“The thing that I find myself and most musicians struggling most with is, what does the future look like? And I mean not this year, next year, I mean 10 years,” said Goldsmith, whose brother and bandmate Taylor Goldsmith lost his studio but not his house. They’ll be playing at the FireAid benefit concert.

“What does the music business look like in LA going forward? What do any businesses look like in LA going forward?” he said. “Everyone collectively was just so terrified by what went down, and I just fear that there’s more of this to come. More fire, more climate change-driven, apocalyptic-type shit.”

For musicians, instruments are methods of healing through catastrophe.

“Music can bring people together, and I just would really like to see that more,” said Christie Lynn Lawrence, an Altadena-based music director, singer and teacher whose house burned in the Eaton fire. “And it’s happening, but I wish we could not have this incredible crisis for it to happen.”