IN SYNC WITH JAZZ'S UNIVERSE.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Staff Writer

When I asked the great young jazz vibes player Stefon Harris what's in his CD player, he offers up Lenny Kravitz and Stevie Wonder and then pauses.

``Can I admit it?'' Harris asks, laughing. ``Um - Justin Timberlake. I love the production. I think it's great.''

Coming from a guy who named his latest album ``The Grand Unification Theory'' and peppers his conversation with stuff he has learned from studying quantum physics, the nod to Timberlake does rank as something of a surprise. But Harris, who begins a six-day engagement at the Jazz Bakery Tuesday night, is a man quite capable of larger astonishments, as the music on his new album suggests.

In ``The Grand Unification Theory,'' Harris leads a 12-piece jazz ensemble in a suite of songs about birth, life, death and the meaning of it all. If that sounds a little grandiose, especially coming from a 29-year-old who had never written music for a large band before, well, you may have a point.

Remarkably, though, Harris made good on his grand ambitions, creating an evocative and enjoyable listening experience that has concert audiences roaring their approval.

``What's great about it is the range and depth of his ambition and how often he is able to pull it off,'' says noted jazz writer Gene Santoro. ``The music has everything from funk to hip-hop to African tinges to circular beats and Stefon weaves those things together to create a tone poem that is like a 21st-century version of Gil Evans.''

Harris first won notice for his mastery of the vibraphone while playing with late sax legend Joe Henderson and his masterful take on Gershwin's ``Porgy and Bess.'' Harris has also played with the likes of Wynton Marsalis, Charlie Hunter and Cassandra Wilson, but it has been on his own albums that he has sparkled brightest, showing himself to be both a first- rate composer and wonderfully lyrical player.

``The Grand Unification Theory'' came out of a commission from the Troy Music Hall in Harris' native Albany, N.Y. With the budget to finally create the kind of grand music that he has always heard in his head, Harris wrote an 11-movement suite of songs that begins with a celebration of life and ends with the stillness of death. In between, there's a musical representation of the big-bang theory, an ode to '70s house parties and a song about reincarnation.

``It's a mini autobiography in the sense that when I was writing the music, I took everything I was interested in and pieced it together into a story. Because at the time I was offered the commission, I was studying physics, poetry, Spanish, Buddhism. I wasn't really thinking about music much at all.''

Harris briefly considered passing on the commission. But while reading physicist Stephen Hawking's book ``A Brief History of Time,'' he came across a theory in quantum physics - the grand unification theory - that changed his mind.

``The grand unification theory says the four major forces in the universe are actually all the same force working at different energy levels. I thought that was a very spiritual concept and decided to apply it to my own life and bring all my different interests together, expressing them through music.''

Harris has received his fair share of grief for the album title, but he says most people are fine with it, unaware of its connection to physics.

``People tell me it sounds pretty funky. And it is. It really is.''

STEFON HARRIS

Where: Jazz Bakery, 3233 Helms Ave., Culver City.

When: 8 and 9:30 p.m. Tuesday through April 6.

Tickets: $30 Tuesday through Thursday; $35 Friday through Sunday. Call [phone].

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Vibes player Stefon Harris juggles a number of styles and ideas on his newest album, ``The Grand Unification Theory.''