Don't Go There is a seven minute long piece for full orchestra composed during the spring of 2005. It has a simple and transparent form. The piece opens with a fast but subdued murmuring section that grows quickly to a climax. This leads into a slow, melodic B section. The A section returns but only after a strange detour through a new harmonic and textural world. The second A section grows to a crashing climax which is followed by brief, slow coda—a memory of the slow melody from the B section. Like most of my music, Don't Go There draws inspiration from many different, and sometimes opposing extra-musical sources. But I think that two principal images were particularly important to me during the compositional process. One is that of the Pacific Ocean, which was a few miles down the road from the house I grew up in. The other image, a more abstract one, is that of urban life. Where is “there” exactly? I am actually not sure. Perhaps it is in the loud, registrally extreme chords near the end of the piece, or perhaps in the surprising c, d, e-flat cluster that occurs right before the return to the A section. But wherever “there” is, we only get a brief glimpse of it, before returning to the world we are used to.