Honoring Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Six years ago soprano and composer Patrice Michaels stepped into the limelight with the dramatic concert and album Notorious RBG in Song, which honored Michaels’ mother-in-law, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. At its core was Michaels’ cycle THE LONG VIEW: A Portrait of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Nine Songs, joined by contributions from other prominent composers.
Ginsburg lived long enough to attend a concert featuring the song cycle at the National Museum of Women in the Arts celebrating her 85th birthday in 2018. Cedille Records released the album featuring the composition that same year. In 2019 RBG made headlines by stepping out after treatment for lung cancer to experience the full dramatic concert with chamber orchestra, chorus and live screen projections, hosted by the National Constitution Center, with Michaels singing and narrating a text of her own creation.
In THE LONG VIEW, Michaels set to music text from Ginsburg’s correspondence. Now, in a kind of mirror image, another noted composer has set words from the pens of both Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Patrice Michaels (from the latter’s essay on a “Day in the Life” of Justice Ginsburg) to music.
“Steps for Justice,” by Pulitzer- and multi-Grammy-winning composer Jennifer Higdon and commissioned by the Pacifica Quartet, will have its world premiere on April 12, 2026, in Washington, D.C., with a New York premiere planned for 2027. The Pacifica Quartet will perform and NPR’s Nina Totenberg will narrate.
A Day in the Life
I asked Jennifer Higdon to describe the new work. She told me in an email that while “Steps for Justice” is hard for her to describe, “hopefully, it’s bold enough to pay appropriate tribute to Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s hard work, brilliant mind, and deep care for humanity.”
Regarding using Michaels’ text, Higdon added that “it is truly wonderful that part of the process allowed me to share Patrice’s observations on what a Supreme Court Justice might be doing in a day (something that none of us would have a clue about).”
The two composers have something in common (besides respect for the Notorious RBG): both Jennifer Higdon and Patrice Michaels have a longstanding association with classical music label Cedille Records. Higdon’s work has appeared on four Cedille albums, including two Grammy winners, strange imaginary animals and the Pacifica Quartet’s Contemporary Voices. For her part, Michaels is featured as a soprano on no fewer than 15 Cedille albums beginning in 1994, adding her roles as composer and lyricist in 2014.
Unearthing the Joy
But first, and to mark Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s birth anniversary, Cedille Records has announced the March 6, 2026 release of a song by Michaels originally intended for THE LONG VIEW but until now unreleased.
In “On the Joys of Recorded Music,” Michaels adapted and set the text of a letter from Justice David H. Souter to James Ginsburg, the label’s founder and president and son of Justice Ginsburg. Souter wrote James Ginsburg to praise the label’s then-recent album from violinist Rachel Barton Pine, Handel: The Sonatas for Violin and Continuo.
So Ginsburg and her odd-couple opera compadre Antonin Scalia weren’t the only music-loving Supreme Court Justices. In his letter, Justice Souter marveled at the recording’s emotional impact, writing that he found it as deeply moving as a live performance.
The digital single of “On the Joys of Recorded Music” is performed by soprano Alisa Jordheim and pianist Kuang-Hao Huang. “The song pays homage to Handel, to Rachel Barton Pine’s artistry, to Jim Ginsburg’s vision to record and distribute performances of this brilliance, and to a very special mother’s pride at her son’s accomplishment,” Michaels explained. “It was utterly delightful for me to weave Justice Souter’s words into a baroque-inflected, jazz-meets-classical song style. Alisa and Kuang-Hao’s performances bring out every nuance.”