Billy Strayhorn was best known as Duke Ellington's collaborator, but he was also a brilliant composer-lyricist in his own right. Here Darius de Haas takes on sixteen of his greatest compositions, some recorded for the first time. When Darius first performed this material in March of 2001, Stephen Holden in The New York Times wrote, "An astonishing vocal acrobat, Mr. de Haas combines the timbre of a pure wind instrument with a fearless but disciplined theatricality and the swinging authority of a jazz powerhouse.... This extraordinary program has to be recorded."

In reviewing the CD, the LA Times applauded the many “remarkable” cuts, noting, “De Haas' interpretations are driven by an astonishingly versatile voice. Switching his intense vibrato on and off at will, soaring up into piercing head tones, dropping into deeper chest sounds, De Haas applies this rich vocabulary of sounds to the job of telling Strayhorn's compelling musical stories.” The Chicago Tribune hailed, “He announces himself as a potentially major jazz vocalist. Offering sometimes radical reappraisals of jazz standards by composer Billy Strayhorn, De Haas proves fearless in recasting these tunes in original, distinctive ways.” And Jazz Times found that his “singular treatments, at once earthy and ethereal,” make Day Dream “one of the finest Strayhorn salutes ever captured on disc.”