Saint James

José James spent a decade reshaping jazz with the genre-blurring verve of a crate-digging beat guru, before becoming a solo R&B star. The last couple years he lived in Bill Withers' shoes — recording and touring his legendary songbook for the Lean On Me project. Now, the satin-voiced songwriter's latest is No Beginning No End 2, a sequel to his 2013 album that resurrects the bold eclecticism audiences first fell in love with. After the Bill Withers tour, James recalls: “I wrote a thing on Instagram saying I was thinking about No Beginning No End 2 and people went insane. They wrote thousands of comments about how the first one changed their life. I don't sit around and think 'my work is so important' so that was kinda nice."

Olga Borodina sings the role of Dalila here too; her tone in the famous aria Mon cœur s'ouvre à ta voix is quite ravishing, and she is matched by an heroic performance from Plácido Domingo as Samson. James Levine has an expert grasp of the drama in this 1998 Elijah Moshinsky production from the Metropolitan Opera. There's also some luxury casting in the form of Sergei Leiferkus as Le Grand Prêtre de Dagon and René Pape as Le Vieillard Hébreu. (James Longstaffe)

For the first time, this collection brings together the complete woodwind chamber music of France's leading composers in the medium: Debussy, Saint-Saëns, Ravel and Poulenc. In a set which evinces the now familiar Cala hallmark of creatively combining established treasures with enticing discoveries, including here four world première recordings. Volume One presents the works of Debussy and Saint-Saëns and Volume Two those of Ravel and Poulenc. Each volume contains two full-length CDs (well over two hours of music) for the price of one.