CURATION
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from this page:
by Matrix
Network Node
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Name:
Patrice Rushen
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City/Place:
Altadena, California
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Country:
United States
Life
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Bio:
Multi-Grammy-nominated artist Patrice Rushen has built a career that echoes the legacy of her longtime friend and mentor, Quincy Jones. As a composer, producer, and internationally acclaimed recording artist, Rushen has earned immense respect from her peers in the music industry.
Admired for her groundbreaking achievements, Rushen has amassed an impressive list of "firsts." She was the first woman to serve as Musical Director for the 46th, 47th, and 48th Annual Grammy Awards, as well as the first woman in 43 years to hold the title of Head Composer/Musical Director for television’s highest honor, the Emmy Awards. She also served as Musical Director for the NAACP Image Awards for 12 consecutive years, making history in the process. Additionally, she was the only woman to hold the role of Musical Director/Composer for the People’s Choice Awards and HBO’s Comic Relief. She broke further ground as the only woman to serve as Musical Director, Conductor, and Arranger for a late-night television talk show, CBS’s The Midnight Hour. Her exceptional career also includes serving as Musical Director/Composer for Newsweek’s first American Achievement Awards at the Kennedy Center and leading Janet Jackson’s World Tour, "janet." Over the years, she has composed and performed musical tributes for icons like Michael Landon, Ted Turner, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, The Temptations, James Garner, and Leonard Bernstein. In August 2004, she was named Composer in Residence at the Henry Mancini Institute.
A classically trained pianist, Rushen has spent a lifetime honing the skills that make her one of the industry’s most versatile and sought-after artists. In 1998, her adult contemporary album "Signature" earned a Grammy nomination, as well as an NAACP Image Award nomination, and reached the top ten on the adult contemporary jazz charts. Her signature fusion of jazz, R&B, and pop—a blend of melodic accessibility and instrumental mastery—has remained a staple of popular radio since the 1970s and 80s.
Rushen’s influence extends far beyond her own recordings. She receives approximately 30 weekly requests to sample her music, particularly for rap albums. Her compositions have been sampled by artists including Kirk Franklin, Mary J. Blige, Zhane, George Michael, Shabba Ranks, and Heavy D. In 2007, Kirk Franklin’s award-winning hit "Looking for You" was built on her song "Haven’t You Heard." Will Smith’s blockbuster hit "Men in Black" sampled her 1982 Grammy-nominated track "Forget Me Nots," earning her an ASCAP award for the 1997 Most Performed Song from a Motion Picture. George Michael’s "Fast Love" also sampled "Forget Me Nots," featuring Rushen’s original vocal tracks. In 2007, ASCAP honored her again for the Top Gospel Song "Looking for You."
Beyond her success as a recording artist, Rushen is a highly accomplished composer, scoring Emmy-nominated television movies and series, including Showtime’s "The Killing Yard" starring Alan Alda, Danny Glover’s directorial debut "Just A Dream," the Sundance Film Award-winning "Our America," and HBO’s "America’s Dream" featuring Danny Glover and Wesley Snipes. Her work also includes the acclaimed Disney telefilm "Ruby Bridges," "Cora Unashamed" for Masterpiece Theater, "Brewster Place" starring Oprah Winfrey, and the theme for "The Steve Harvey Show."
Her film composing credits include "Men in Black," "Waiting to Exhale," Sandra Bernhard’s "Without You I’m Nothing," and Robert Townsend’s "Hollywood Shuffle." As a producer, she helmed Sheena Easton’s "The Nearness of You" for "Indecent Proposal," which led to Easton's 1993 jazz standards album "No Strings," also produced by Rushen.
Recognized as one of the world’s top jazz pianists, Rushen has performed and produced for icons such as Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock, Prince, Lionel Hampton, Carlos Santana, Boyz II Men, George Benson, Jean-Luc Ponty, Tom Jones, Nancy Wilson, Michael Jackson, Dianne Reeves, Stanley Turrentine, Joshua Redman, and many more. She has played at prestigious jazz festivals worldwide and performed with renowned philharmonic orchestras. As Composer in Residence for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (2000–2001), she wrote several symphonic works that premiered to critical acclaim.
With 14 solo albums and a greatest hits anthology released by Rhino Records in 1997, Rushen’s influence remains strong. She has also recorded two albums with The Meeting, a celebrated jazz supergroup featuring Ndugu Chancler and Ernie Watts.
In April 2008, Rushen accepted a professorship at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she teaches "Patrice Rushen: The Value of Music Education." She was also honored as Music Director and host of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s "LA Phil Presents: A Tribute to Ella," celebrating the legendary Ella Fitzgerald.
Rushen received an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Berklee in 2005 for her outstanding contributions to music and culture. In 2006, Jazz at Lincoln Center honored her at "The 2nd Annual Diet Coke Women in Jazz Festival."
Currently, Rushen focuses on composing for film, television, and orchestras, while continuing to make guest appearances at music festivals and on recordings. She hosted Clint Eastwood’s Malpaso Productions documentary "40 Years of the Monterey Jazz Festival" and was featured on HGTV’s "Houses of Note."
Beyond her artistic endeavors, Rushen is deeply committed to music education and mentorship. She works closely with the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, NARAS’s "Grammy in the Schools" program, and various organizations dedicated to providing music education and mentorship for inner-city youth.
Clips (more may be added)
Integration is a superpower...
This technological matrix originating in Bahia, Brazil closely integrates creators around the world with each other and the entire planet. It is able to do so because it is small-world (see Wolfram):
Bahia itself, final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other place on earth throughout all of human history, refuge for Lusitanian Sephardim fleeing the Inquisition, Indigenous both apart and subsumed into a brilliant sociocultural matrix comprised of these three peoples and more, is small-world.
America is small-world. Mozambique is small-world. Central Asia is small-world. Ukraine is small world...
Human society, the billions of us in all the complexity of our relationships, is small-world. Neural structures for human memory are small-world. Neural structures in artificial intelligence are small-world...
In a small world great things are possible. In a small-world matrix they are universal.
Alicia Svigals
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
—Alicia Svigals (NEW YORK CITY): Apotheosis of klezmer violinists
"I'm truly thankful ... Sohlangana ngokuzayo :)"
—Nduduzo Makhathini (JOHANNESBURG): piano, Blue Note recording artist
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers (BOSTON): Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory ... Former personal recording engineer for Prince; "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"
"Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched!"
—Julian Lloyd Webber (LONDON): Premier cellist in UK; brother of Andrew (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Phantom of the Opera...)
"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"
—Clarice Assad (RIO DE JANEIRO/CHICAGO): Pianist and composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world
"We appreciate you including Kamasi in the matrix, Sparrow."
—Banch Abegaze (LOS ANGELES): manager, Kamasi Washington
"Thanks! It looks great!....I didn't write 'Cantaloupe Island' though...Herbie Hancock did! Great Page though, well done! best, Randy"
"Very nice! Thank you for this. Warmest regards and wishing much success for the project! Matt"
—Son of Jimmy Garrison (bass for John Coltrane, Bill Evans...); plays with Herbie Hancock and other greats...
Dear friends & colleagues,
Having arrived in Salvador 13 years earlier, I opened a record shop in 2005 in order to create an outlet to the wider world for Bahian musicians, many of them magisterial but unknown.
David Dye & Kim Junod for NPR found us (above), and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (he's a huge jazz fan), David Byrne, Oscar Castro-Neves... Spike Lee walked past the place while I was sitting on the stoop across the street drinking beer and listening to samba from the speaker in the window...
But we weren't exactly easy for the world-at-large to get to. So in order to extend the place's ethos I transformed the site associated with it into a network wherein Brazilian musicians I knew would recommend other Brazilian musicians, who would recommend others...
And as I anticipated, the chalky hand of God-as-mathematician intervened: In human society — per the small-world phenomenon — most of the billions of us on earth are within some 6 or fewer degrees of each other. Likewise, within a network of interlinked artists as I've described above, most of these artists will in the same manner be at most a handful of steps away from each other.
So then, all that's necessary to put the Bahians and other Brazilians within possible purview of the wide wide world is to include them among a wide wide range of artists around that world.
If, for example, Quincy Jones is inside the matrix (people who have passed are not removed), then anybody on his page — whether they be accessing from a campus in L.A., a pub in Dublin, a shebeen in Cape Town, a tent in Mongolia — will be close, transitable steps away from Raymundo Sodré, even if they know nothing of Brazil and are unaware that Sodré sings/dances upon this planet. Sodré, having been knocked from the perch of fame and ground into anonymity by Brazil's dictatorship, has now the alternative of access to the world-at-large via recourse to the vast potential of network theory.
...to the degree that other artists et al — writers, researchers, filmmakers, painters, choreographers...everywhere — do also. Artificial intelligence not required. Real intelligence, yes.
Years ago in NYC I "rescued" unpaid royalties (performance & mechanical) for artists/composers including Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Mongo Santamaria, Jim Hall, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd (for his rights in Bob Marley compositions; Clement was Bob's first producer), Led Zeppelin, Ray Barretto, Philip Glass and many others. Aretha called me out of the blue vis-à-vis money owed by Atlantic Records. Allen Klein (managed The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Ray Charles) called about money due the estate of Sam Cooke. Jerry Ragovoy (Time Is On My Side, Piece of My Heart) called just to see if he had any unpaid money floating around out there (the royalty world was a shark-filled jungle, to mangle metaphors, and I doubt it's changed).
But the pertinent client (and friend) in the present context is Earl "Speedo" Carroll, of The Cadillacs. Earl went from doo-wopping on Harlem streetcorners to chart-topping success to working as a custodian at PS 87 elementary school on the west side of Manhattan. Through all of this he never lost what made him great.
Greatness and fame are too often conflated. The former should be accessible independently of the latter.
* I renegotiated sync rates for Earl and for The Flamingos. Now when I hear "Speedo" in a movie soundtrack (Goodfellows and others), or "I Only Have Eyes for You" (a million films), I remind myself that the artists (and now their heirs) were/are getting double what they were getting before.
Matrix founding creators are behind "one of 10 of the best (radios) around the world", per The Guardian.
Recent access to this matrix and Bahia are from these places (a single marker can denote multiple accesses).
Across the creative universe... For another list, reload page.
This list is random, and incomplete. Reload the page for another list.
For a complete list of everybody inside, tap TOTAL below:
TOTAL
Nduduzo Makhathini
Susan Rogers
Julian Lloyd Webber
Clarice Assad
Kamasi Washington
Randy Brecker
Matt Garrison
RÁDIO MATRIX