Birds have long inspired composers to capture in sound what words and images cannot — flight, song, courtship, captivity, and the strange intelligence of creatures who share our world but live by entirely different rules. This program traces that fascination across two centuries and four continents: Villa-Lobos evokes the birdsong-laced forests of Brazil in his puckish Choros No. 2, while Amy Beach transcribes the actual notes of a hermit thrush she heard at dawn and dusk into hushed, luminous miniatures. Mason Bates' Life of Birds turns an ornithological field guide into a musical one, moving from mechanical flutter to lazy parakeet reverie to the plaintive, confined song of "The Caged Bird Sings." Haydn closes the program with the wit and buoyant energy of his "Bird" Quartet, its chirping opening theme a reminder that composers have been listening closely to birds for as long as they've been writing music. Taken together, these works form an aviary of their own — a collection of musical creatures, each capturing a different facet of what it means to sing.