Composers often find inspiration from other music, drawing from history, tradition, and artistic lineage. The Music That Inspires Us begins with Reena Esmail’s Avartan, a transcendent fusion of Indian and Western classical traditions. Next on the program is Caroline Shaw’s Entr’acte for string orchestra. Written in 2011, the piece was inspired by a moment in a Haydn string quartet where the music suddenly shifts in tone and texture. Shaw describes Entr’acte as “taking you to the other side of Alice’s looking glass,” a kind of musical portal that begins in a classical idiom and gradually distorts it. We will conclude the program with Igor Stravinsky’s Pulcinella Suite. Taken from his ballet on the Italian commedia dell’arte character, the Pulcinella Suite is a witty and colorful homage to 18th-century Italian Baroque music filtered through Stravinsky’s modernist lens.