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).
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
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.
The Bristol European Jazz Ensemble 