Brian Jackson & Yasiin Bey in London

Brian Jackson is an American keyboardist, flautist, composer and singer, born in Brooklyn in 1952. His long partnership with poet and musician Gil Scott-Heron shaped soul jazz and jazz-funk recordings including Winter in America, The First Minute of a New Day and Bridges, as well as songs such as “The Bottle,” “Johannesburg” and “We Almost Lost Detroit.” Throughout the 1970s, he toured with Gil Scott-Heron as a keyboardist and flautist in the Midnight Band. That period included the 1979 No Nukes concerts, where the group performed “We Almost Lost Detroit” at Madison Square Garden.

Yasiin Bey is an American rapper, singer and actor born in Brooklyn in 1973. First known as Mos Def, he established his recording career through Black Star, his duo with Talib Kweli, and the 1998 album Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star. His solo debut, Black on Both Sides, includes “Ms. Fat Booty,” “Mathematics” and “Umi Says”; later albums include The New Danger and The Ecstatic. In 2011, he reunited with Talib Kweli for Black Star performances on the Rock the Bells festival tour. At the end of 2016 and beginning of 2017, concerts billed as farewell appearances took him to the Apollo Theater and the Kennedy Center. In 2019, he presented the unreleased album Negus as a listening installation at the Brooklyn Museum.