Acoustic Dirt playing a one-time show as a 6-piece (normally was a 3-piece) - recorded live at The Jazz Room in July, 2014.
Evan plays keys & sings, Alex plays electric guitar, Scott plays acoustic guitar, and Jeff plays drums.

Always Crashing In The Same Car + Be My Wife (David Bowie)

Acoustic Dirt playing a one-time show as a 6-piece (normally was a 3-piece) - recorded live at The Jazz Room in July, 2014.
Evan plays keys & sings, Alex plays electric guitar, Scott plays acoustic guitar, Jeff plays drums, and Dan and Kesenia sing backing vocals.

Angel (Dave Matthews Band)

Evan Pointner - vocals, piano, arrangements, production
Alex Showdra - electric guitar
Aneeq Kalson - drums
Jeremy Bernard - sound engineering
Dave Pike - additional production
Jason Burgos - additional production
photo credit to Mirror Form Photography

Loose jazzy band arrangements of songs written by the artists credited in parentheses. Although these recordings contain creations directly inspired by other composers, the band made no profit from this concert or these recordings. All arrangements based on songs of the same title, with the exception of Throw Me Tomorrow (based on a song called "Thursday's Child")

Throw Me Tomorrow (David Bowie)

Time Has Told Me (Nick Drake)

recorded at the Maureen Forrester Recital Hall, in March 2013

Where's The Truth? (2013)

I composed Intersynchronism in January-February 2016, after being inspired by a polyrhythm and chord progression that I enjoyed. For the first few weeks of being with the piece, I was just improvising ideas at the piano. It's based on an ever-unfolding polyrhythm of a 3-eighth-note figure on top of a tonal 8-bar progression in 7/8, and the overall flavour is recognizably influenced by New York "minimalist" composers like Steve Reich & Philip Glass. This recording is taken from the On the Spot Collective's first concert (formerly the Kitchener-Waterloo Composer Collective), which was on May 7th 2016 at The Button Factory in Waterloo, Ontario.
Evan Pointner - piano
Amanda Lowry - flute
Kourosh Ghamsari-Esfahani - violin
Matt Donnelly - double bass

Intersynchronism (2016)

This is the soundtrack to a contact dance performance piece by Tanya Williams and Vivek Patel, called "I See You?", which has been performed in Buffalo, Montreal, and Waterloo. It is composed from a manipulated version of one of my Jazz Room performances with Acoustic Dirt. Slowed down by 800%, the song's length increased to almost an hour. Tanya and I worked together to choose a section of this long ambient slab of sound to go along with the dance performance, then we adjusted the volume in some spots to account for the speaking that is a part of the performance.

Here is a video that Vivek put together using video clips of one of their performances of the piece, as well as interview snippets interspersed throughout:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHmI0CJEKSg

The performers on the original recording from The Jazz Room (the song that was slowed down) are myself Evan Pointner (piano, singing), Alex Showdra (electric guitar) and Aneeq Kalson (drums).

Slow Music

I See You? (2016)

This was composed from processing a short audio sample of a melody being played on a piano.

Evan Pointner

Fragmented (2012)

This was composed out of layering processes using samples of a snare drum. The beats in the original samples are played at various unrelated tempos, which are presented simultaneously. The rest of the processes that took place during the composing led to a further complex overall sound.

Kaleidescope (2012)

In an effort to try a composition process that I hadn't tried before... This was composed using only 2 audio tracks, both looping a short audio sample from the song "Asilos Magdalena" by The Mars Volta. They are slightly out of sync, with each other, resulting in consistently unfamiliar nuances, within a consistently predictable sonic texture. Within the illusion of exact repetition, the overall sound does not repeat itself once - only it's two individual (simultaneously heard) parts are repeating. For me, these fresh nuances & ongoing ambience provide an enjoyment as a listener.

MU360 portfolio mp3

Enfermo llegué (2013)

This is a neo-classical piano piece in the style of a fantasia from the Romantic era. It was my final classical-sounding solo piano composition, before I shifted my focus to piano improvisation, songs, and experimental music.

Primary Influences:
- solo piano pieces of Romantic-era composers Chopin & Rachmaninoff
- classical harmony (chord progressions), blended with Impressionistic chords that resemble the music of Debussy
- contemporary art rock bands Radiohead & Muse
- the process of reversing music, and stealing backwards melodies & chord progressions from what I hear - in this case, the song "Space Dementia" by Muse, which itself quotes a piano concerto by Rachmaninoff.

"Ghost" (as it was first named) was composed in the summer of 2011, over the course of about 2 weeks, and then tweaked by my borderline-obsessive perfectionist mind over the next 6 months or so. Since writing this piece, my perfectionist patterns have made themselves at home making song arrangements & producing music + mixing recordings :)

Creative Project Concert March 16, 2012

Bring Back the Ghost (2011)

This is a recorded performance of a loosely-structured improv piece. The composition is based on poly-modality (being in multiple keys at once). Within our pre-determined structure, we went into deep meditative space and became a channel for this music to emerge. It is almost entirely freely-improvised.

Ellipsis (Evan & Kasia, 2012)

Glitchy, ultra-lofi, jazz-influenced experimental chiptune...
consisting entirely of samples from Super Mario Land 2.
Created in January-February 2018

2018 remixes

Mario Soup

a 12-minute slice of a set called "River Tape" - composed of samples from old Nintendo games, software drum kits, and water sounds.
This slice contains elements of jazz rhythms & ambient textures. It can be divided into four unnamed tracks, with the second beginning at 2:50, the third at 5:54, and the fourth at 8:00.

Games featured on this track: Ocarina of Time, Super Mario Land 2.
Created in February-March 2018

I said to a friend, during this time: "I am interested in the spectrum that exists in music between emptiness and space, between meditation and information-dense jazz"

River Tape (part 2)

a 9-minute slice of a set called "River Tape" - composed of samples from old Nintendo games, software drum kits, and water sounds. This slice contains elements of trance & ambient sound worlds, featuring sound effects & filtered samples of reversed music from the game Ocarina of Time. It can be divided into three unnamed tracks, with the second beginning at 1:25, the third fading in around 5:30, and then the first making a reprise around 7:00.

Created in February-April 2018.

I said to a friend, during this time: "I am interested in the spectrum that exists in music between emptiness and space, between meditation and information-dense jazz"

River Tape (part 3)

another 12-minute slice of a set called "River Tape" - composed of samples from old Nintendo games, software drum kits, and water sounds. This slice consists of downtempo beats, trance vibes, & psychedelic waves of sound. It can be divided into three unnamed tracks, with the second beginning at 4:11, the third at 6:53.

Games featured on this track: Ocarina of Time, Super Mario Land 2

Created in January-April 2018.

River Tape (part 4)

Cedarwood Sounds is the current project of recording artist Evan Pointner (a.k.a. Cedar Wood) who has worn many musical hats. After a long phase of experimenting throughout 2018, he has since been focusing on creating meditative ambient music for deep explorations of consciousness.

This page includes an eclectic mix of recordings from 2018 and earlier - solo and collaborative works over the span of several years inspired by jazz, soul, experimental rock, minimalism, ambient, contemporary classical, electronic music and sound walks.

Evan is also a music teacher offering student-centred lessons with a focus on listening, curiosity, and learning musical languages.

Cedarwood Sounds

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