(2025) Practical Considerations

Practical Considerations album cover art

Release Date: November 15, 2025

Album Length: 39'16"

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Tracks

  1. Counterexamples (07:55)
  2. Midnight In Brooklyn (03:30)
  3. There Was More To It (08:33)
  4. I Would Follow You: I. To The Visions of Fancy (03:48)
  5. I Would Follow You: II. Echo (04:17)
  6. I Would Follow You: III. A Song In Summer (05:04)
  7. I Would Follow You: IV. Chamber Music XVI (02:25)
  8. Loving All That Is Cold (03:40)

About This Album

Practical Considerations is my debut album, collecting five chamber music pieces I composed between late April and early October of 2025.

The idea to work on a studio album came to me in late July, when I had just returned from a composition workshop in Berlin with hope and excitement. Emboldened by the encouragement I received at the workshop, I gave myself the deadline of mid-November to put together an album and a concert. I had not known much about the requisite logistical details, and, unsurprisingly, a few frantic months followed. Much of the composition work was done in August and September; the musicians were sourced largely in September; rehearsals and recording sessions took place in October.

The album title refers to the theme of wrestling with impractical situations present throughout the album: falling in love with a phantom, attempting to explain the unexplainable, trying intentionally to merge ideas that don’t necessarily work well together, and even the way I approached this very album project.

Musically, I aimed to be a student of clarity, keeping in mind the three groups of audiences: the listeners, the performers, and the composers. I, of course, wanted to have an interesting compositional experience for myself, and so I strove for a diversity of formal approaches throughout the project. Nevertheless, I consciously prioritized the practical considerations throughout my compositional process: What do I want the listeners to get out of this piece? Am I creating a piece that is enjoyable to perform, or, at the very least, avoids being needlessly annoying? Is there a simpler way to execute my compositional intent without sacrificing what the listeners will get out of this piece?

To effectively interface with such questions, I needed to get out of my own head. I am grateful to have had an opportunity to work with incredible performers, who taught me more about music composition in one short month than any textbook ever could. A few friends, musicians themselves, also provided me with listeners’ perspectives, patiently checking out many of my drafts and offering helpful feedback. Working with my composition teacher throughout the project helped me gain a more objective composer’s perspective on the pieces and steer me away from ineffective choices. All of this is to say I have received more help than I could have hoped for, often on extremely short notice: any rough edges here are mine and mine alone.

While I have written program notes for every piece here, I decided against distributing them alongside the album. It’s not that they’re secrets: any concert I have of these pieces will include them, in keeping with the usual expectations. But, throughout this project, I pondered on the notion of music as technical communication. The success of a communication attempt is determined not by the communicator but the recipient. Accordingly, the music I present here is not what I say they are, but what you think they are. I hope you will let me know what they are — I care that you listen.

Personnel

Composition

All music written by Mark Kim-Mulgrew.

Lyrics by Ann Radcliffe (4), Christina Rossetti (5), Sophie Jewett (6), and James Joyce (7).

Musicians

Production

Design

Special Thanks

Lyrics

To The Visions of Fancy (Ann Radcliffe)

Dear, wild illusions of creative mind!
Whose varying hues arise to Fancy’s art,
And by her magic force are swift combined
In forms that please, and scenes that touch the heart:
Oh! whether at her voice ye soft assume
The pensive grace of sorrow drooping low;
Or rise sublime on terror’s lofty plume,
And shake the soul with wildly thrilling woe;
Or, sweetly bright, your gayer tints ye spread,
Bid scenes of pleasures steal upon my view,
Love wave his purple pinions o’er my head,
And wake the tender thought to passion true.
O! still—ye shadowy forms! attend my lonely hours,
Still chase my real cares with your illusive powers!

Echo (Christina Rossetti)

Come to me in the silence of the night;
  Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
  As sunlight on a stream;
    Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.

Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
  Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;
  Where thirsting longing eyes
    Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
  My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
  Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
    Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago!

A Song In Summer (Sophie Jewett)

If I were but the west wind,
  I would follow you;
Cross a hundred hills to find
  Your world of green and blue;

In your pine wood linger,
  Whisper to you there
Stories old and strange, and finger
  Softly your bright hair.

Chamber Music XVI (James Joyce)

O cool is the valley now
    And there, love, will we go
For many a choir is singing now
    Where Love did sometime go.
And hear you not the thrushes calling,
    Calling us away?
O cool and pleasant is the valley
    And there, love, will we stay.