Matt Vekakis:

“Drive-by Apothéose” attempts to thread two poles of the human story. In the summer of 2016, I witnessed the aftermath of a drive-by shooting in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood. I remember little of what I saw. But the incident shattered my young and very naïve idea of the human capacity for violence. Following this figurative thread to its opposite pole, I have long been inspired by the zeniths of human ability. “Apothéose” draws sound and texture from Maurice Ravel’s Ma mère l’Oye: a concentrate of zeniths that culminates in a bevy of percussion floating across the ear. The tension of “Apothéose” lives here — with both poles facing the other. Damningly, we must consider our own potential for brilliance and depravity.