Donavan/Muradian Quintet

Donavan/Muradian Quintet: Pacifico

by Eric J. Iannelli
April 17, 2004

Another title for Pacifico could be The Lost EmArcy Sessions. The music on this disc—all original charts save one—comes straight out of the Brown/Roach hard bop stylebook with some additional nods to the Blue Note roster of the late ’50s and early ’60s; and it greets this reviewer’s (self-confessedly conservative) ears, bruised by the proliferation of so much avant noisemaking, as pure delight.

The Donavan/Muradian Quintet, or DMQ, an outfit formerly and somewhat confusingly known as The Nairobi ...