What should a portrait of Caroline Shaw look like?

There’s Caroline Shaw the performer: a violinist and vocalist who grew up going to music camp and singing in choirs. There’s also the collaboratively minded composer who, at 30, became the youngest winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music. And don’t forget the artist of surprising pop culture cameos, with appearances on tracks by Kanye West and the soundtrack for the recent film “Bombshell.”

That’s a lot for any one angle to capture. But, for me, what summed up these varied interests and activities was a revealing photograph of Ms. Shaw used by the Miller Theater at Columbia University to promote its Composer Portraits program of her music, performed on Thursday evening.

In the photo, she appears casually dressed against a millennial-pink backdrop; her smile is not only one of happiness, but also of carefree ease and approachability. The image connects all Ms. Shaw’s projects and performances: an audaciously uninhibited approach to music-making based on joy, omnivorous curiosity and congeniality — even as her work challenges your expectations and takes you by surprise.

On paper, the Miller concert looked like an incomplete portrait — just a few string quartets and a couple of works for voice and percussion — but it came as close as I could imagine to conveying the spirit of Ms. Shaw’s music.