Born in 1982, Pulitzer Prize–winning composer, violinist, and singer Caroline Shaw moves fluidly among the worlds of early music, contemporary composition, and indie music collaboration, performing with ensembles such as Roomful of Teeth while creating works that are both conceptually playful and emotionally direct. Originally written in 2011 for the Brentano String Quartet and later arranged for string orchestra, Entr’acte was inspired by the minuet from Joseph Haydn’s String Quartet in F Major, Op. 77, No. 2. As Shaw describes the work, 

Entr’acte…is structured like a minuet and trio, riffing on that classical form but taking it a little further. I love the way some music (like the minuets of Op. 77) suddenly takes you to the other side of Alice’s looking glass, in a kind of absurd, subtle, technicolor transition.

While Entr’acte initially evokes Haydn’s Classical idiom, it quickly and quietly destabilizes any expectations through sudden shifts of texture, luminous sustained chords, and passages that seem to hover outside of time. Both affectionate homage and subtle subversion, Entr’acte treats the Classical style not as a relic but as living material, refracted through a contemporary ear.