The precocious sax virtuosity that got Teodross Avery a record deal in 1992 while a 19 year-old Berklee College student suggested an emerging stature comparable to Joshua Redman's or Michael Brecker's – but in the 1990s and early 2000s, he was leaning toward hip-hop and neo-soul with Roy Ayers, Mos Def, Lauryn Hill and Amy Winehouse (on Winehouse's debut, Frank), and nowadays he's a respected jazz academic. But Harlem Stories: The Music of Thelonious Monk (splitting two small-bands across ten tracks, and released on drummer Willie Jones III's own label) is no scholarly guided tour.

Avery's pre-free Coltrane roots let him uninhibitedly tear into timeless gems like ‘Evidence’, ‘Rhythm-a-ning’ and ‘In Walked Bud’, and his wistfully playful handling of ‘Ruby My Dear’ reveals an affecting tenderness. His rugged, swerving tenor charge and head-butting short phrases on the staccato ‘Teo’ suggests both early Coltrane and Johnny Griffin; ‘Evidence’ is powerfully punctuated by Willie Jones III and percussionist Allakoi Peete; a flat-out ‘Rhythm-a-ning’ has the leader hurtling through a compendium of classic tenor-sax methods of the 1950s and early 60s; and ‘In Walked Bud’ balances Monk's moods with the swaggering, late-night Harlem vibe of this album's title.

Teodross Avery has an urge to fill every chink that can lean toward a generic over-familiarity after a while, and he's less authoritative on soprano sax than tenor, but this is nonetheless a vibrant example of an unobtrusively gifted jazz player reinventing what first turned him on to the art.