Patrice Rushen.

Only on rare occasions do we come across artists who attain the rarefied heights of pop stardom, only to abandon that path in order to satisfy the inner muse — someone, who, after basking in the limelight, finds a niche which allows the pursuit of a multifaceted career that is free from the fickle nature of celebrity and pop culture. Patrice Rushen, whose pop career peaked in the early 1980s, is one such musician.

“The demands of the pop arena included some things that didn’t interest me,” she said in a recent interview with DCist. “I pulled back a little bit to get back to the path that most interested me. The desire was to be a comprehensive contemporary musician that would go way beyond what I could do in pop music.”

Rushen will perform on Saturday at the Kennedy Center‘s Terrace Theater with Geri Allen and special guest drummer Terri Lyne Carrington. Her career got its kick start in 1972, when the 18-year-old piano prodigy won a prestigious competition at the Monterey Jazz Festival, earning her a contract with Prestige Records, a storied jazz label. Rushen sang on one of the tracks of her last album with Prestige, bringing her to the attention of Elektra Records. Beginning in 1978, she recorded a series of albums featuring a number of hit R&B singles, the most popular of which were “I Need Your Love,” which she performed on Soul Train in 1981, and “Forget Me Nots,” which became the basis for Will Smith’s “Men in Black” and George Michael’s “Fastlove.”

“In that era, I was allowed to write all the arrangements,” Rushen explained. “I wanted to balance artistic aesthetic with being able to be accessible. I didn’t see the two as having to be mutually exclusive.”