The NOW Ensemble is receiving a lot of media attention for the new album Awake, including a recent plug on NPR’s All Things Considered. There is also a very favorable Washington Post review from the Library of Congress performance; Anne Midgette praises works from the album, including Waiting in the Rain for Snow, as “pretty terrific…Each had a distinct voice but a shared ethos, in part because of the distinctive instrumentation of flute, clarinet, electric guitar, piano and double bass, which leads to a lot of piercing or clarion top lines and a lot of layering of sound as the disparate timbres intersect.”

The New Haven Advocate loves the “slow burning of intensity” of Waiting in the Rain for Snow while the Classical Review says “There’s something appropriately liquescent about David Crowell’s Waiting in the Rain for Snow. A meditation on the crystallization of rain or ice into snow, it’s a hymnal to a hidden process, the sense of transformation etched and sculpted by intricate, repeated figures in guitar and piano overlaid and compounded by shifting, drifting patterns in woodwinds.”

Awake was also named album of the month at Silent Ballet and album of the week on New York’s own WQXR. Alarm Press also gave it album of the week, saying that “throughout Awake, simple and complex repetitions are deftly woven together, forming patterns that engage listeners while urging their ears to dig deeper, layer by layer.”

Finally, Awake has reached #2 in overall Classical sales on Amazon (#1 in the Classical Chamber Music category) while getting as high as #6 in overall Classical sales on iTunes.