The Chicago-born alto saxophonist played with Miles Davis on Birth of the Cool, and was heralded for his bold improvisatory styleJazz saxophonist Lee Konitz, whose 75-year career stretched back to the big band era, has died aged 92 after contracting Covid-19. Konitz, who was born in Chicago in 1927 to Jewish immigrant parents, first learned the clarinet aged 11 and switched to alto saxophone a year later. He helped to advance the “cool jazz” sound of the 50s, and then the freer and more improvisatory style that became dominant in the 1960s. Although he wrote some of his own material, more often he improvised or interpreted jazz standards and other players’ compositions. Konitz is the second prominent Miles Davis collaborator to have died from coronavirus – Wallace Roney, who won a Grammy for interpretations of Davis’s work, died earlier this month aged 59.

Source: The Guardian April 16, 2020 08:20 UTC