Tenor saxophonist Stan Getz found a perfect accompanist in pianist Kenny Barron, who would regularly play in his group for his last five years. This out-of-print Black Hawk LP finds the pair, along with bassist George Mraz and drummer Victor Lewis, performing two standards and four more recent pieces, including two ("Dreams" and "Voyage") by Barron. The music is difficult to classify (modern bop?) but relatively easy to understand; Getz never coasts. ~ Scott Yanow

The "Best Of Robin Auld Volume 1" has been a retail favourite, selling to the nostalgia driven forty plus market who remember "All Of Woman". However, his growing younger audience of late twenty to early thirty-somethings, whose first memories of Auld were established by his ground breaking "Zen Surfing In the Third World" album, have been attracted by the contemporary sounds of his more recent material.

Robin Auld's new album, "Diamond of a Day", absorbs the influences of his previous acoustic soul recordings into the big and bold strokes of an immediate pop record. The various influences on Auld's work, from the established canon of the singer/songwriter to the Southern African, blues and Celtic guitar styles that continue to inspire him, are represented throughout the 13 tracks all underpinned by his distinctive vocal phrasings and, as always, Auld's strong melodic sense.

The various songwriting styles of pop, blues, country and African have has merged into a sound he calls rootspop, where mbaqanga rhythms pulse under Celtic melodies, pop guitar lines mix with blues groove tunes and straight ahead pop songs display Auld's love of counterpoint and harmony.... all while keeping his one-take production philosophy.

The track "I Got Lucky" reached No 16 on New York's Crystal Blue Top 50 songs of 2004.