Štěpán Jinek (*2004), in addition to playing the bassoon, has also tried his hand at the piano, accordion and organ; he remains in intimate contact with some of these instruments to this day. However, his closest relationship has stayed with the bassoon – both as a performer and as a teacher at the Taussigova Elementary Art School.

He performs at concerts and competitions, where he attempts to compensate for his performance deficit, caused by insufficient study of the repertoire, with a feigned effort at a passable dress sense and refined behaviour. In the unfortunate event that his shortcomings are exposed, he blames them on an excessive love of coffee or on the need to maintain a social life in his favourite restaurants and bars.

Realistically, it could even be said that visiting cafés is in fact his main field of study and his dearest environment – naturally right after practice cubicles full of despair, broken bassoon reeds, dead batteries from a tormented metronome and shreds of music torn to pieces in horror, where tears slowly blur the notes along with the performer’s hair, gradually yanked out while working on new compositions.

This year – utterly exhausted despite an excessive level of caffeine – he is completing the sixth year at the Prague Conservatoire in the bassoon class of Ondřej Roskovec and Tomáš Františ. Full of enthusiasm and expectations, perpetually alternating with phases of disappointment, they have willingly guided him through his artistic life so far, and he is now setting out, somewhat tremulously, towards the next instalment of the series The Drowned Man, or How I Navigate the Waves of Life.