touchbar and keyboard brightness adjustment Is there a way to manually control keyboard backlight with a MBP touchbar?

The same way the old F6 key was working on non touchbar laptop
Yes, first expand the control strip by clicking on the arrow next to the 4 control buttons on the right (or 5 if you set it). Now there should be two icon similar to the one on the F5 and F6 key (unless you got rid of it in Keyboard Settings -> Customize Control Strip it should be there).