In this Qwest TV production recorded in 2025 at La Petite Halle, an intimate concert venue in Paris, keyboardist and composer Brian Jackson begins with a tribute to Gil Scott-Heron, his longtime musical partner. He then performs a song with which they often opened their concerts, “Offering,” from their 1974 album, The First Minute Of A New Day. He is alone at the Fender Rhodes in what almost feels like an invocation.

Jackson has regained well-deserved recognition thanks to his collaboration with Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge on the “Jazz Is Dead” project, a series whose eighth album was released in 2021. While he boasts a long career and an impressive discography, he remains acutely aware of what he owes to those who came before him, as evidenced by the next track, his composition “Lady Day & John Coltrane,” as well as the dark past of his homeland, addressed in his collaboration with Scott-Heron, “Winter in America.”

Jackson concludes this short set with “The Bottle,” a powerful social commentary also stemming from his collaboration with Scott-Heron and a stark reminder that music is as much a tool for education as it is for entertainment.