Artist bios"

A composer, lyricist, and playwright, Michael R. Jackson began collaborating on musical theater projects as a student as New York University in the mid-2000s. The year 2019 saw the world premiere of his own musical, A Strange Loop, and the accompanying cast album release.

Raised in Detroit, Jackson attended the city's Cass Technical High School, where playwright/actress Dominique Morisseau was a classmate. He went on to earn both a B.F.A. in playwriting and an M.F.A. in Musical Theatre Writing from the NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Among his earliest works was the book and lyrics for the musical Only Children, a collaboration with composer Rachel Peters. A 2016-2017 Dramatist Guild fellow, in 2017 Jackson was awarded the Jonathan Larson Grant, a Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award, and the ASCAP Foundation Harold Adamson Lyric Award. He won a Whiting Award for drama in March 2019.

Though not officially autobiographical, his musical A Strange Loop concerns a young Black gay writer as he juggles trying to compose a musical and a day job he despises. With book, music, and lyrics by Jackson, it opened off-Broadway in June 2019. That same year, Teeth, a collaboration with composer Anna K. Jacobs and adaptation of the 2007 indie horror film, appeared at the National Alliance for Musical Theatre's Festival of New Musicals.

Jennifer Hudson is a generational singer and actress whose immense voice resonates whether she is singing original material or interpreting classics written for the church, stage, screen, or pop radio. The Chicago native appeared in 2004 on American Idol and soon became one of the most successful alumni from the reality television competition. Her portrayal of Effie White in the film version of Dreamgirls (2006) earned her an Academy Award, and her mature full-length debut, Jennifer Hudson (2008), won a Grammy for Best R&B Album. Hudson's second and third Top Ten albums, I Remember Me (2011) and JHUD (2014), coincided with roles in projects such as Winnie Mandela (2011), Chi-Raq (2015), and a Broadway revival of The Color Purple (also 2015). The cast recording of the latter earned Hudson her second Grammy award. Amid other acting and production work, her hosting of The Jennifer Hudson Show, and scattered musical activity, Hudson starred in the Aretha Franklin biopic Respect (2021), and as a co-producer won an Emmy for Baba Yaga and a Tony for A Strange Loop -- accolades that made her the youngest woman and third African-American to achieve EGOT status. The Christmas-themed Gift of Love (2024) was Hudson's first studio album in a decade.