After 3 months of preparation I’m finally ready to start the marketing for this exciting tour which has been my main focus this autumn. Tour organisers will know the feeling of dozens of emails going out into the void with no return, like satellites leaving the solar system. And there were several near misses of the ‘it doesn’t quite fit’ genre, or offers of nights where we’re already booked, or double-booked venues who changed their minds, and venues just too pricey to afford. Still I persisted and we have five smashing gigs lined up.
CARDIFF The Flute and Tankard Feb 18
LONDON St Cyprian’s Church Feb 20
BRISTOL St Paul’s Church Clifton Feb 21
LYME REGIS Marine Theatre Feb 22
BATH The Bell Inn Feb 23
In the interval since our three city tour of South Korea August 2025 Yunmi has published and received reviews for her wonderful sensitive duo album with acclaimed American guitarist John Stowell. Yunmi Kang × John Stowell Duo Album — A Timeless Place “A living dialogue between voice and guitar—music where spontaneity and depth coexist. Even in moments of instant reaction, the two musicians shape a larger structure together, creating a true conversation in sound.” Shin Saem-i, @lovecoexist Jazz People @jazzpeople_magazine
I’m composing new tunes too. And both of us are thinking about the join between our humanitarian concerns and our art. It feels so hard to stay being an artist focussed on creativity whilst my heart and finance and time are taken by responding to the genocide in practical ways, and in dialogue with victims in Gaza. I want to express these growing relationships in my music and find a common humanity to overcome the divide between us. I know Yunmi is thinking and feeling the same with social fault lines in her own country. She applied for a culture grant from her government and wasn’t successful this time, but it sharpened our thinking meanwhile. We’ve been starting discussions with a visual artist too, but probably won’t involve her yet, before the summer when we’ll retirn to Korea all being well, to make our 2nd album, the expression of this search for common humanity across dehumanizing divides.
I hope BEJE fans, and bigbromo promo fans and friends will catch us at one of our gigs. There’ll be an update in January I expect. Meanwhile to Korea tour -featuring the tune I wrote this year to honour my mother’s passing- is on the website front page. (If the gremlin angels keep it there).
We had a great time before a large audience at Cotham Club on 24th October 2025. I had wanted to dig out more danceable numbers, recent and past compositions, but in that respect only a few responded. “If only we could be as uninhibited as the children” who danced joyously with no inhibition, was one comment. But people loved it. “A Lovely set, haunting jazz, poetry, beautiful sounds, that mesmerised the audience ” Claire Nuttall Club manager. Pic Duncan Cruikshank
From August 11 to 21 Paolo Adamo and I travelled to South Korea, invited by the Chuncheon Arts Festival and by our friends Yunmi Kang and Sangyeon Park. It was a long-awaited reunion, sparked by Yunmi and Sangyeon coming to the UK a year before. Landing in the hot humid summer, full of the sound of cicadas, a gastronomic road-trip with futuristic tower blocks and towering forested mountains flashing by and bowls of delicious things dripping from chop sticks in every pit stop, we spent a happy 10 days preparing for and performing three gigs.
We can’t thank enough Yunmi and Sangyeon for their dedicated hospitality in their mountain home, for organising the gigs, and above all for being our soul sister and brother in this amazing collaboration. We have great plans for the future: a UK tour in February 2026, an album and gigs back in South Korea in August and a return in 2027. Below is a transcript of the news article about our Chuncheon Festival appearance.
What can music do when society is shrouded in darkness? There are times when music approaches us like a prayer. When the music of artists, created for those weary of life, resonates with the audience, it gives them the strength to carry on.
On Liberation Day, August 15, at Seongam Church in Chuncheon, the Chuncheon Performing Arts Festival presented a performance by “Yunmi Kang & David Mowat BEJE Reunion.” Trumpeter David Mowat, vocalist/pianist Yunmi Kang, guitarist Sangyeon Park, and drummer Paolo Adamo formed the group in 2018.
David Mowat is an artist who has practised social solidarity, refugee support, and anti-war activism through music for more than 30 years. He once made a year-long pilgrimage from Bristol, England to Jerusalem, playing the trumpet along the way to deliver a message of peace. Their performance unfolded as a serious form of jazz that transcended nationality and culture. Though ways of life differ, the philosophy that we are all alike and essentially one was deeply embedded in their music.
In an interview with this paper, David Mowat spoke of Korea’s painful history and the ongoing massacres in Gaza, explaining the value of connection. Jazz vocalist Yunmi Kang, who joined the interview, also said: “I hope our music can move people’s hearts and minds to become a tool for creating a better world.”
Q. “What is this BEJE ‘Reunion’, and how did it feel to perform with Korean artists?
DM “In Europe, musicians often try to assert themselves through their playing. My personality doesn’t fit well with that. Korean musicians are very delicate, calm, and composed. Instead of rushing to convey their stories, I appreciated how they could step back and reflect through the music.”
Q. You have continued to raise your voice for Gaza. What can music do?
DM “Music has the power to move people and awaken humanity. I am not only a performer but also a political activist. Music crosses borders. While I speak out for the oppressed in Gaza, I am also a scholar of Jewish music, which is beautiful in its own right. Music transcends boundaries and plays a role in opening hearts and transforming relationships of division and hostility.”
Q. How do you see the current situation in Palestine?
“First, I must speak about the role of journalism in telling the truth. Those in power do not want the truth revealed. If journalists disappear, they can do as they wish. Today’s media and social media create distortion, undermining the value of journalism. The Israeli government is targeting Palestinian journalists for elimination. A journalist friend of mine was recently murdered in what was clearly an assassination. The role of reporting what is really happening is vital. If journalists vanish, the powerful will dictate the narrative, and most people will believe and follow it. Journalists who tell the truth of what happens in a single day hold an invaluable and dangerous role.”
Q. Today is Korea’s Liberation Day. Are you aware of Korea’s history?
DM “It is inspiring. The Korean people are well organized, modern, and proud. Commemorating independence and freedom is not only about the past but also meaningful for the present and future. I’ve studied Korea’s political situation: the people have repeatedly fought corruption and power, raising their voices in the streets. Koreans cherish freedom and know how easily it can be lost—that it is never simply given. I didn’t fully grasp this in Europe, but being in Korea I felt the nation’s independent identity. This is an important message to send to the world. For the oppressed people of Palestine, Korea’s example can deliver the message that ‘if we unite, we can win freedom.’”
Q. The concert’s theme was loss and recovery, coexistence and solidarity. You performed ‘With No Petals’, dedicated to Comfort Women. [Tell us about it]
DM “That piece was composed by our guitarist, Sangyeon Park. It was meaningful to perform it on such an important day. The very process of performing it together strengthens the connection within our project. We wanted to express the hidden pain and dignity beyond it in a solemn yet restrained tone. I believe music is not a tool for self-display but a way to address the realities and social issues we live with.”
Q. The final piece, Gig for Gil, seemed to encapsulate the group’s message….
DM “Yes. We are not so different, but if we don’t yield and only collide, coexistence is impossible. The piece starts with simple motifs, but each voice enters differently, clashing in dissonance until the drum solo leads into harmony. Building a team is about faith and conviction beyond music.”
Q. What is in your mind when you play the trumpet?
DM “On stage, sincerity is everything. The instrument is the amplifier of my soul. I must express the reality I see and feel through music.”
Q. What gives you the strength to continue such passionate work?
DM “Music itself. What drives us is the hunger to express truth and the desire to comfort others. And the fact that we can share those stories together, that alone is reason enough for music.” —Reporter Jin-Hyung Kim
For excerpt from our first album ‘Modernised Sacrifice’ see below
Faris Ishaq is quite simply the unique master of the contemporary jazz ney. The ney is an ancient flute originally from Egypt and ubiquitous in Arabic cultures. Faris took it to Berklee for his World Jazz Masters and blew Dave Liebmann away. Faris and I met in 2018 in Occupied Palestine when I toured a British Council-sponsored musical show about the consequences of Balfour’s impossible promise to both Zionist Jews and the indigenous Palestinians, a promise broken. Under Faris’s leadership BEJE play a unique set with both his and my compositions, grooving poignant and lyrical, though I say it myself.
Why at a time of genocide should music still matter? When Israel is burning refugees in tents why I should I be flyering Street high street about a gig?
We are all exiled from the land of inalienable human rights assembled after WW2. It looks more and more like it was only ever a podium built by hypocrites in a sea of shit. O look, the ICJ has broken off and is listing badly.
How can we sing in this strange land? As a declining morally bankrupt USA throws its last hurrah of violent proxy horror, what good our harps? (I realise the vantage point of sister Yunmi and brother Sangyeon in South Korea up against China is different).
‘Siblings Not Fools’ is short hand for the Martin Luther King quote “We must learn to live as brothers or we perish as fools”, which has resonated with me since I painted a 1980 banner with this for an anti-apartheid march in Sheffield.
Every time I play with musicians, particularly since the BEJE project started in 2013, it’s like I re-affirm a new family. We are brothers and sisters in music making. And in BEJE the stretch of inter-cultural and international connection is particularly broad. The experience of working with Senegalese griot Moussa Kouyate was particularly challenging during lockdown, as we came from such different places, but apart from a very fine album it has left Moussa and I feeling closely connected.
Connection is the thing. That’s what keeps me motivated. I hope that what we generate together, so much more than the bond between the performers, really delivers the message that we are indeed already brothers and sisters, we feel it through the music, through the shared experience of the gig, and that this empowers up to reaffirm in every place our shared humanity. It helps me that at each gig I read a poem by my little brother Ibrahim Yaghi, journalist and poet holed up in Deir Al Balah, Gaza.
So to gig with Enrico and Fabio Freddy and Mattia (full descriptions in the link above) at this time (Oct 25 to Nov 1st) is a big cry of “No!” to the immolation of refugees and of hope, and a big “Yes!” to what makes us human, with joy love fellow-feeling and purpose. A big “Yes!” that begins in sound and spirit and travels to the political and social realm too.
So later today I will resume my PayPal giving to families I know in Gaza knowing that there isn’t a tension between politics, charity and music. Music turns the tap to the source. Spirit, the Divine, call it what you will. All else follows.
By David Mowat, founder of BEJE and community worker 18/5/20
Main Questions to people who’ve attended gigs I’ve organised/played at, or who read about my work :
1. Has attending concerts at Saint Stephen’s or at Lincoln Gardens Care Scheme helped you connect more with others? Explain how.
2. Has the music programme at Saint Stephen’s reduced any barriers you may have felt between church-member/goer and non-church member?
3. Has the music programme at Lincoln Gardens helped reduce any barriers between this establishment and the neighbourhood, or between non-resident and tenant?
4. Does BEJE convey to you a positive spirit of internationalism that you feel emboldened by?
Last week ACE Arts Council England awarded me emergency funding to give me some time and space to explore my practice, given the nearly complete absence of live gigs during this pandemic on which much of my livelihood depended. This is part of what I told them I’d do if I received funding:
I’ll use the time to think critically about, blog and debate my role as a builder of community through the arts locally (as in older people’s work) and globally e.g. the political internationalism of BEJE.
Lincoln Gardens community room during a gig. Pam drums a tambourine whilst the daughter of a visitor Aisha, interacts with Princess
I began this adventure of consciously fusing together my two practices of music and community work 20 years ago when I helped start East Bristol Jazz Club and produced King Cotton, a community jazz musical about the Great Western Cotton Factory in Barton Hill (cds for sale).
Now I’m thinking about the last 10 years or so. I’m blogging to generate dialogue and help my practice to improve.
Building community through music locally has had two main outlets in my practice. For 11 years I’ve curated mainly lunch time concerts at Saint Stephen’s Church in Bristol’s city centre. And for 5 years I’ve organised weekly musical entertainment at Lincoln Gardens Extra Care Scheme in Lawrence Hill.
I claim that what I’m trying to do in these two locations is not only give enjoyment to individuals who’ve attended gigs I’ve played in or curated. I hope I’ve helped connect people to others attending these events, perhaps because they’ve shared an enjoyable experience and memory, or realise their common love for a song, or see that lived through the same era evoked by a pop song. The concert may have helped create an atmosphere in which barriers between us are lowered.
Dutch singer Anne Chris with BEJE at Saint Stephen’s in 2015-all my eggs in one basket: internationalism and secular music in a sacred space drawing diverse audiences together (I hope).
If you’ve attended concerts at Lincoln Gardens or Saint Stephen’s can you say that it’s helped connect you more to others?
What was it about the event that did it for you?
Is there something else about building community through music at an event I’ve organised that I’ve missed out?
More than helping connections to increase between people present, I hope that my work has helped reduce barriers between the church and care home on the one hand, and ‘outsiders’ on the other. Both events have been public. In the case of Lincoln Gardens a few non-tenants have attended: family members, carers local residents and of course the performers themselves. In the case of Saint Stephen’s Church, both congregation members and others have come. I like to think that pagans and atheists and others have sat near to Christians without being bothered about any difference, but have been held together in the experience of the music.
Is this hope of mine true?
Are you a non-Christian who has perhaps looked more kindly on the building and the community (/ties) of Saint Stephen’s because of the concerts you’ve attended?
Does the church wall give less of a ‘keep out’ message to you than perhaps it once did?
If so, so what?
Would you put it another way?
Does Lincoln Gardens feel less a place-apart from the neighbourhood as a result of having public concerts there?
Building community on a global scale. This section may sound very grandiose. By it, I don’t mean I’m trying to replicate the United Nations. But whilst much of my life has been focused in the minutiae of neighbourhoods, I’ve also had a feeling for the ‘global village’, for how globalisation has pulled the web of humanity ever-closer. I am a strong believer in the cliché ‘There is only one race, the human race’. And that ‘we sink or swim together’. And I’ve tried to use music to do that. One of the bands I set up (it no longer feels ‘my’ band except in a parental sense) is Chai For All. Band members are equally interested in Middle Eastern music and politics as in Jewish music culture and politics. However I don’t want to focus on that here. Rather I draw attention to the Bristol European Jazz Ensemble (BEJE) founded 2013.
With BEJE I’ve tried to promote the idea that one English city, Bristol, is very much ‘a part of the continent’ to quote John Donne. Alongside giving enjoyment to audiences and players who love jazz I hope we’re conveying the idea that culture in general and jazz in particular (and our music particularly so) is border-less. And politically, it -and its makers- have to cross borders to breathe and flourish. BEJE pre-dated Brexit but anticipated it. More recently BEJE has become more international still in our collaboration with Yunmi Kang and Sangyeon Park of South Korea. Most of that collaboration, inshallah, is still to come.
BEJE at the Stroud Jazz Festival in 2016
If you’ve ever been to a gig or heard our music and read about us, does the BEJE project convey to you the positive spirit of internationalism?
If so how does it do it?
Do you buy into it?
Does the BEJE ‘brand’ add anything to the feeling of jazz as a political international force for good which is arguably a commonplace idea?
Is it a minor part of a bigger project, which is music pure and simple? Are these aspirations of mine just so much twaddle that get in the way of music?
That’s enough for a first blog. I hope you’ll respond. I’m not looking for praise, I’m looking for evidence and constructive comments to help me improve. Thank you for reading. David Mowat.
Yunmi Kang Sangyeon Park and BEJE Tri. Full details on dedicated page on this website.
Jan 21st St Stephen’s Church Bristol 1.10pm (work in progress performance)
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Jan 23rd Fringe Jazz Bristol
Jan 25th Peggy’s Skylight Nottingham
Jan 26th Taunton CIC. TOUR END
Picture: The great Federico Leonori, a passionate engaging and risk taking bass player from Rome Italy and a frequent player with BEJE. Like Len and Ana hih biog will come soon!
March 29th Prema Arts Centre Uley (The date we all fall off a cliff?)
It’s tricky managing several bands and updating information on fb and elsewhere and I confess I have lapsed with this site. I was advised to get a more catchy address and while I now own bejejazz.com I haven’t gone further yet. If you’re not bothered with words, go for the link at the bottom of this blog.
Since the summer BEJE has been promoted again after a lull. For starters we made a show reel of our euRIP jazz suite performed at the March Bristol International jazz festival.
Following that we had a series of fabulous autumn gigs. First up was The Bocabar October 10th with Len Aruliah, quite a regular now, newly Ana Gomez Spanish pianist, Guillaume Ottaviani who did the same gig last year and Paolo Adamo on drums. We had a super time, slightly challenged by my inexperience in wearing varifocals.
Next An absolute gem of a venue, Peggy’s Skylight in Nottingham Nov 10 gave us a great welcome and we also went down a storm. On this occasion Al Swainger was on bass and Mattia Collu on drums.Len (pictured-not yet with his BEJE biog) has helped a lot by re presenting my o so last century hand written charts.
Seeing our availability for an edgy political statement/poem on Europe, Any Hague kindly booked us for Bristol’s Bebop Club (some band had let him down and we’re o so wiling) and we performed on Nov 23. This time that relaxed and buzzing Tony Orrell took the drum seat. That was a pretty good night too, not quite the fervour of Nottingham but then a prophet is not without except at home.
And last and not least, in an attemt to mark my 60th year and bring various BEJE family members together I held a BEJE party on Dec 9th at the Salt Cafe Bristol. Very warmly hosted by Alan with a great eye for economics. He’d sold out of food when the band came to have theirs. No hard feelings Alan, we’ll be back- and eat first next time. My friend and mentor pianist jazzicologist Ben Williams recorded the complete set, mixed it, and hey presto, I have a new live album for sale. On the occasion Julien Alenda played a blinder on tenor, Anders Olinder on keyboards was always elegant and Knud Stuwe played a couple of oud numbers. Len, Ana, Guillaume were there. I loved it all. Find three tracks below.
The Bristol European Jazz Ensemble 