Brian Jackson Live in Paris

Keyboardist Brian Jackson performs an intimate set blending personal tributes, social commentary, and his iconic work with Gil Scott-Heron.

Born in Brooklyn in 1952, Brian Jackson met poet and musician Gil Scott-Heron at Lincoln University in 1969. Together they forged one of the most politically charged partnerships in Black American music. At La Petite Halle in Paris, keyboardist and composer Brian Jackson delivers an intimate solo performance that moves between personal tribute, musical heritage and social conscience. The concert opens with "Offering," a song that regularly introduced the shows he shared with poet and musician Gil Scott-Heron, drawn from their 1974 album The First Minute Of A New Day. Alone at the Fender Rhodes, Jackson plays it almost as an invocation, a way of centering himself before anything else is said.

Jackson's profile was reinvigorated through his collaboration with Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge on the Jazz Is Dead project, whose eighth volume was dedicated to him and released in 2021. But the concert reveals an artist equally defined by gratitude and historical awareness. His own composition "Lady Day & John Coltrane" honours two foundational figures of Black American music, while "Winter in America," one of his most celebrated collaborations with Scott-Heron, confronts the darker fault lines of his country with understated, unflinching power.

The set closes with "The Bottle," a piece of pointed social commentary that has lost none of its edge over the decades. Taken together, these performances affirm something Jackson has always understood: that music, when it matters most, educates as much as it moves, a conviction that has shaped his work across more than fifty years.

Genre Live Show
Production year 2025
Duration 26:54
Musical style Jazz, Funk, Soul
Recording location Paris, France