Star Trek: What Instrument Does Picard Play?
Considered by many fans to be the greatest captain in the history of the "Star Trek" franchise, Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) is one of the most iconic and popular characters in science fiction history — bringing audiences on countless adventures across the stars during his time on "Star Trek: The Next Generation," "Star Trek: Picard," and several "Star Trek" feature films.
Throughout the years we've seen Picard display plenty of incredible talents across a variety of different fields: showing himself to be an passionate explorer, an expert battle tactician, and an incredible negotiator. We've even seen Picard's musical talents on display during the "Next Generation" episode "The Inner Light" – in which he can be seen playing a "Ressikan Flute" during an alternate life in the small community of Ressik.
Picard learns to play this flute when a probe from the long-dead planet of Kataan reaches his ship and transmits a nucleonic beam into Picard's brain, allowing Picard to experience more than 50 years of life from the perspective of "Kamin" — a member of the Ressik community who lived during the 14th century. The episode ends with Picard regaining consciousness after living a lifetime on Kataan (which only took 25 minutes aboard the USS Enterprise), and subsequently discovering the real flute aboard the probe.
Picard plays this flute in several other episodes of The. Next Generation
The Ressikan flute itself is a relatively simplistic metal flute with a string wrapped around the shaft, though for Jean-Luc Picard it becomes an object of immense importance following this life changing experience on Kataan.
The flute can be seen in later episodes (and even a deleted scene from the film "Star Trek: Nemesis") sitting in a place of pride among Picard's possessions in his "ready room" on the USS Enterprise. The flute is also featured prominently in the "Star Trek: The Next Generation"
Episodes "Lessons;" in which he plays it alongside stellar cartographer Nella Daren (Wendy Hughes) and in "A Fistful of Datas;" where we hear him perform a song of his own invention using the flute and previous recordings of Mozart. Indeed, this small metal flute appears to be one of Picard's most prized possessions throughout the rest of his time on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" — and one has to wonder if we'll see any reference to the captain's musical talent during the upcoming series finale of "Star Trek: Picard."