Štěpán Flagar

Dear everyone,

Welcome to my website. Here you will find everything there is to know about my music, tours, projects, and written thoughts on various musical and non-musical topics. Thank you for taking the time to look around—I hope you find something that catches your attention. Several albums will be released in the coming months, in which I am participating, so thank you for staying tuned.

Alongside touring and writing new music for different projects of mine—such as HAEZZ, onQ FIVE, and a duo with Georg Vogel—I am currently deeply focused on the subject of solo saxophone. I will perform my new solo programme in the Strenge Kammer at Porgy & Bess on December 7, 2026.

Solo saxophone performance has always been a huge challenge for me. The saxophone has such a soloistic nature as an instrument. Due to its nature as a single-line instrument, it is extremely difficult to play solo and to make it interesting for 50 min. It is deeply satisfying to blow over a beautiful set of harmonies—this is where, as a jazz saxophone player, one truly feel at home. In any other context, the saxophone often somehow may seem less convincing than when playing a slow, sub-tone solo on a lyrical ballad.

Like many others, my journey with the tenor saxophone has been full of ups and downs. There were difficult periods, including months of not playing the instrument at all, and even moments when I considered stopping altogether and switching to another instrument—which, to a certain extent, I did. I began taking the piano more seriously. I have always had a relationship with the piano, and once I started playing it more, I was given the opportunity to record an album with the Czech singer and actor Vladimír Javorský. I was very fortunate to have this chance to explore the piano in such a way.

While recording several of my piano solos for that album, I had a profound realization. I could not really play the instrument well—certainly not as well as I play the saxophone—but I felt that I was much better at creating music with it. I considered myself a saxophone player, so I had no real ambition to completely eliminate my technical limitations on the piano. It was a new realization for me that, despite these obvious technical limits, my musical expression was not affected. I felt free from the desire to “be good,” and could simply play music. It was a mystery to me.

I suddenly realized that since my beginnings, almost every time I picked up the saxophone, my intention was “to practise,” whereas every time I sat down at the piano, my intention was “to play music.” As a result, my muscle memory and musical intuition worked in very different ways depending on the instrument. When it came to spontaneous creation, I longed for the same sense of liberation while improvising on the saxophone.

Over the years, I have discovered that my way of dealing with such difficulties is essentially to set myself a new challenge—a new step, a new attempt. This never-ending journey of trying to better myself has certainly improved my saxophone skills, but it also kept me from recognizing, for a long time, what art truly means to me. I think I understood this much better through the piano. Or perhaps I never will fully know. I believe an artist simply senses what needs to be done next.

If one sets a certain aesthetic as a goal, there is a level of skill that must be achieved in order to create within that aesthetic. Driven by the motivation to reach my own, I decided to write a saxophone concerto for symphony orchestra and myself. This foolish idea quite literally opened up the world of music for me. So far, it remains my first and only attempt at orchestral writing. Studying scores, listening extensively to symphonic and chamber music, and the writing process itself were all revelations—mostly because I never used the saxophone to compose. Instead, I tried to imagine the sounds and melodies as I wrote them.

I discovered that as soon as I started thinking about every single note, the written ideas became very different from those I would have improvised. Once again, there it was—the realization that my fingers were not fully connected to my ear. Of course, to a certain extent, I used MIDI demos to play back the written parts, but I always relied on my ear to decide which note should come next, never the muscle memory of my fingers.

When I began learning the written parts on the saxophone, I could suddenly feel the connection between my fingers, ears, and brain growing stronger—and at the same time, I felt myself letting go of the need to “be good.” I felt that I could truly play music on my instrument. I saw the light at the end of the tunnel, and I knew where to go next.

Now, after several years of working on this newly realized connection, I stand before a new task: to develop a solo programme for tenor saxophone, to explore the instrument’s possibilities, to stand alone on stage, and to fully command the balance between music and silence.

Thank you for reading,

Stepan