Nick Drake's first two albums - "Five Leaves Left" and "Bryter Layter" - famously sold in tiny numbers when they were first released at the turn of the 70s. Their reevaluation in the decades since, and the ever-increasing number of Drake fans around the world - now stretching into the hundreds of thousands - has much to do with Robert Kirby, whose string, brass and woodwind arrangements helped to make the records so distinctive. Totemic of a post-60s, post-swinging England that wore a greatcoat and kicked up leaves, Kirby's orchestrations were relaxed, familiar, and entirely autumnal. His talent was appreciated by producer/manager Sandy Robertson, who booked him for other prime British folk-rockers - Ian Matthews, Spirogyra, Shelagh McDonald, Keith Christmas - and by Joe Boyd, who asked Kirby to work with Vashti Bunyan.