Guido Manusardi

Folk Tales is a quartet album by pianist Guido Manusardi, who widens his trio with bassist Lucio Terzano and drummer Gianni Cazzola by adding trombonist Roberto Rossi. Soul Note released it in 2007, and the All About Jazz Italian staff, reviewing it that November, wondered why the record had waited about five years to appear. All twelve pieces are Manusardi's own.

Rossi plays trombone and also shells, Terzano double bass, Cazzola drums. The tracks are mostly between four and seven minutes, from the opening Rye Bread through The Mirror, Circle Dance and Mule Track, with Long Time Ago the longest at over eight minutes and Crying closing the set. The All About Jazz review set the record against Manusardi's then recent trio album with the same rhythm section, Siena Concert, and his duo Tandem with Yuri Goloubev, and found the pianist's refined solo voice joined here to a more energetic construction. The reviewer placed the compositions in the hard bop tradition, heard a rhythm section that could pass for an American one, and singled out Rossi's dark, deep trombone sound and his strong, incisive unisons, which reach toward both the orthodox trombone tradition and the harsher edges of contemporary jazz. The review also praised Manusardi's inventive comping and picked out The Poet Said and the lullaby Ninna Nani as the pieces most likely to stay with the listener.

Soul Note CD 121431-2, first released in 2007.