Book Patrice Rushen for colleges, festivals, performing arts centers & private events. Contact Degy Entertainment for booking info.
Patrice Rushen is a pianist and composer who emerged in the 1970s working across jazz, R&B, classical, and pop instead of settling into any one of them. Her catalog runs from *Patrice* through *Pizzazz* and *Signature*, and her recordings have appeared on labels including Prestige, Elektra, and Arista. Soul, disco, and jazz-funk all sit inside that body of work, held together by the jazz vocabulary she plays from.
She is a Los Angeles musician by origin and by training. Before the records came the classroom: Rushen studied music education and piano performance at the University of Southern California, and that formal grounding is what lets her move between an arranger's chair and a keyboard bench.
Alongside her solo career, Rushen has worked within groups including CAB and The Meeting, and she has performed at the SFJAZZ Center, Miner Auditorium, and the Jay Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park. The recognition has followed the work: the Los Angeles Jazz Society named her Jazz Composer/Arranger of the Year in 2025, she received the Black Music Honors Lifetime Achievement Award in 2024, and the National Endowment for the Arts named her a 2026 NEA Jazz Master. She is a strong fit for college concert series, festival and performing arts center lineups, corporate programs, and private events.
