Thanks for these recommendations. I already really like Yussef Kamaal, and from a short sampling these other artists will definitely make it into my rotation.
I feel I should also point out that Coltrane went much further than the sort of jazz that would be considered "academic" in his later years, as he got freer and more avant-garde. I particularly like the last year or so of his classic quartet (1965), as they stretched musical forms into very intense, dissonant directions, while still maintaining a masterful group cohesion. Take this performance[1] of My Favorite Things, for example, and compare it to the version released four years before--it's worlds apart.