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Celebrated jazz musician Lee Konitz has died at the age of 92 after contracting Covid-19.

The saxophonist, who was known for his ground-breaking improvisational style, played with greats like Charles Mingus, Bud Powell and Ornette Coleman.

But he was perhaps best known as one of the musicians on Miles Davis's landmark album Birth Of The Cool.

His family confirmed to NPR he had died in New York from pneumonia related to the coronavirus.

Born 1927 in Chicago, Konitz studied clarinet early on, then switched to the alto saxophone, developing an individual style characterised by a willingness to take daring harmonic risks.

His uninflected tone set him apart from the dominant style of the 1950s, established by Charlie Parker - who he counted as a close friend.

"I knew and loved Charlie Parker and copied his bebop solos like everyone else," Konitz told The Wall Street Journal in 2013.

"But I didn't want to sound like him. So I used almost no vibrato and played mostly in the higher register. That's the heart of my sound."

He developed his passion for improvisation as a teenager, when he spent three years studying and playing with the blind pianist Lennie Tristano.

"The idea is that the music is full of surprises," he said.

"Improvisary means unforeheard, unforeseen. I don't know what the Latin word for heard is. But it's something like that."

Audacious

In 1949, he recorded what are considered to be the first two freely improvised jazz records - Intuition and Digression - with the Lennie Tristano quintet.

The concept was that the musicians knew which order they'd join the ensemble playing, but nothing else was predetermined -from key and tempo to melody and rhythm.

Critic Barry Ulanov called it "the most audacious experiment yet attempted in jazz".

In the same year, he played with Miles Davis on the sessions that were eventually compiled to form the seminal Birth Of The Cool album, which spawned the "cool jazz" sound of the 50s.