There’s no way anyone could forget about R&B/jazz singer-pianist Patrice Rushen, who will take to the Walt Disney Concert Hall stage on Friday, May 2. Rushen, the first woman to serve as music director for the Grammys, is preparing a show unbounded by one album or type of music. It’s a fitting approach for an artist who’s made a career out of not boxing herself into one category, let alone one role. And with a venue like the Hall, as part of their Jazz series with Herbie Hancock preceding her on March 30, few could live up to its legacy as Rushen does. Tickets for the concert are available now.

 Similar to the many shows we write about, especially at the Walt Disney Hall, Grimy Goods will be giving away tickets to this concert. Subscribe to our newsletter and/ or follow Grimy Goods on Instagram for a chance to win a pair of tickets. The giveaway will be announced soon.

Words: David Sosa

Does it all and then some

Prior to recent memory, Patrice Rushen had already cemented herself as a bridge between jazz and R&B. An LA native, she began playing the piano at three years old and never turned back, beginning classical training a few years later. On top of graduating from USC, where she would become the chair of their popular music program in 2014, Rushen would begin her career as a music artist at 17, touring and soon dropping three albums in quick succession.

However, it wasn’t until her work in the early 80s that she became recognized. Rushen’s seventh album, Straight from the Heart, is perhaps her most culturally impactful contribution to date. Combining elements of R&B, disco, and jazz, it captured a certain timeless quality that few contemporaries were able to achieve. The next decade, its impact would be felt when the Grammy-nominated single “Forget Me Nots” was sampled in Will Smith’s “Men in Black” in 1997.

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Reemergence in the 2020s

Although Rushen was undoubtedly an accomplished artist with the rare distinction of being respected in classical circles and pop circles, more was yet to come. As if “Forget Me Nots” was not already a hugely influential and popular track, its staying power would come into full display in the early 2020s when the first few seconds blew up on TikTok—and for good reason. The familiar claps between the bassline, in particular, were what drew newfound intrigue, starting a trend where people would see if they could stay on beat.

But “Forget Me Nots,” and the rest of Rushen’s music in extension, had much more going for it. Besides having disco flair so precious that not even Daft Punk would touch it, the saxophone that concludes “Forget Me Nots” doubles as a callback to her jazz roots and a welcomed added ingredient to an already undeniably catchy track. That ability to bring everything together is what left Rushen’s music without an expiration date.

Bringing generations together

No matter when you first heard of Rushen, it’s never a bad time to lose yourself to her music. Rarely is an artist known––for all the right reasons––across wildly different generations. From the baby boomers and older Gen X who first heard Straight from the Heart to the young Gen X and millennials who knew her through artists like Will Smith, to finally, Gen Z rediscovering her on TikTok. Apart from everyone knowing Rushen through different avenues, the wide-spanning recognition she has achieved speaks to what makes her fusion of genres so alluring years later.

While the Hall is best known for housing the classical world, and Rushen is by no means a stranger to the classical world, she exceeds it and every other realm. If anything, the Walt Disney Concert Hall was made for artists like her, who challenge the status quo of what one musician could do and continue to strike gold time after time.

See Patrice Rushen at the Walt Disney Concert Hall on Friday, May 2.