Tag Archives: review

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Yunmi Sang and the BEJE Trio Feb 2026 UK tour

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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).

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HOW CAN WE TOUR WHEN REFUGEES BURN?

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BEJE SIBLINGS NOT FOOLS TOUR 3rd leg: Enrico Merlin x BEJE

https://linktr.ee/enricomerlinbeje?utm_source=linktree_profile_share&ltsid=23f5ce29-99d5-44b8-b99b-0f008cec94f9

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. 

#musicpurpose, #musicandpolitics, #EnricoMerlin+BEJEtour, #BEJEjazz,

Enjoy the music. Our lives depend on it. 

David Mowat