Brandee Younger was a teenager — an aspiring classical harpist, growing up on Long Island — when she came across an eye-opening issue of Harp Column magazine. “There were all these teeny squares,” Ms. Younger said recently, recalling the cover illustration, a yearbook-style photo mosaic. “I saw one dark square. So I flipped through the pages to see who it was, and it was Dorothy Ashby.” This was a fateful discovery for Ms. Younger, 32, who has become a harpist of rare prominence in jazz, building on an African-American legacy largely defined by Ms. Ashby and Alice Coltrane. “Wax & Wane,” Ms. Younger’s sleek, assured new album, luxuriates in groove: It’s the latest statement from a jazz generation weaned on hip-hop producers like J Dilla. But the album is also a genuflection, featuring three songs associated with  Ashby, including the title track.  Younger came to jazz more circuitously. She latched onto Alice Coltrane’s music, with its meditative and astral dimensions, while in high school, around the time she learned of Ashby. Both figures were prized by the crate-digging hip-hop crowd: Ms. Younger recognized one Ashby tune as the main sample in a track by the producer and rapper Pete Rock. At the Hartt School, the conservatory at the University of Hartford, Younger became a scholarship student in the classical department. “It was a real culture shock,” she said. “I didn’t fit in socially.” She hadn’t attended a performing arts high school, which was one difference. Another was more glaring: “Black girl, plus harp,” she said wryly. “I stuck out like a sore thumb.” Ms. Younger quickly found a kinship with Hartt’s jazz program, run at the time by the august alto saxophonist Jackie McLean. He told her to drop by whenever she wanted. “So I did,” she said. “Even though I was studying classical music, I would show up to the master classes, the ensemble classes. I would never bring my instrument; I would just sit there. Four years of that.” Though intimidated by the prospect of improvising, she gradually began to branch out, with encouragement. She was in the graduate program at New York University in 2007 when the saxophonist Ravi Coltrane asked her to play at a memorial service for his mother. Her performance “moved me and everyone in attendance from the first glissando,” Mr. Coltrane recalled. “No harpist thus far has been more capable of combining all of the modern harp traditions — from Salzedo, through Dorothy Ashby, through Alice Coltrane — with such strength, grace and commitment.” This was effectively Ms. Younger’s public debut, and it set the terms for a spiritual succession. New York Times