BEJE is completing a new album in 2026 called ‘Sumud Dance’, after the title of a track by David Mowat. ‘Sumud’ in Arabic means steadfastness or resilience. The album is dedicated to all people, not least Palestinians, who hold resiliently to hope and human decency in the face of oppression and suffering.

In this particular line-up of BEJE (it’s hard to keep track for our followers as there are several BEJE projects) along with Paolo Adamo on drums are Andy Hamill on double bass, whom David first played with in 1994-5 in the Timshel Quintet, Tim Funnell on piano, Knud Stuwe on oud. And to complete the line up is Faris Ishaq on ney.

We like our new album. It’s a sublime melding of Middle Eastern and Western Classical instruments; oud, ney, trumpet, double bass and piano and drums. It reaches in music, words and improvisation to rapturous expressions of beauty and hope through life’s dark passages: personal, social and planetary.

There’s strong melody, spoken word, group improvisation, jazz-rock and Middle Eastern rhythms. Four of us have composed for it.

The album story ‘Sumud Dance’ is the fruit of eight years of collaboration between international ney virtuoso Faris Ishaq, trumpeter David Mowat  and oud player Knud Stüwe who came to Faris’s home town, Beit Sahour in Palestine in 2018 on a British Council-funded music project. There they jammed together just before Faris went to Berklee USA to study at the Global Jazz Institute. The following year Faris contributed music for a show (Longing Belonging and Balfour described here chaiforall.com) featuring David Knud and fellow Beit Sahourian Zaid Hilal. Our three were reunited in BEJE at the inaugural gig of Bristol’s Cotham Club in April 2022 and have developed repertoire and gigged in the UK ever since.

The album was recorded in May and mastered in late August 2026. In September we’re sending it off for reviews and are requesting venues and festivals for album tour gigs in the May-July 2027 period. That’s the plan. One of these will be the main album launch. Please get in touch if you want to offer a gig and know of a venue we should approach.

The videos below are from our post-album recording gig in Bath May 16^th 2026. There are two sample tracks from the album: Knud’s Dark Cloud Lifting and Mowat’s arrangement of a Somali tune he knows as ‘Mustapha’s Song’ to be uploaded soon.