Lee Konitz (born October 13, 1927 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American jazz composer and saxophone player. Konitz is sometimes regarded as the preeminent cool jazz saxophonist, because he performed and recorded with Claude Thornhill, Lennie Tristano (both often cited as important cool jazz proponents of the mid 1940s), and with Miles Davis' on his epochal Birth of the Cool, which gave the form its name. Konitz has also been repeatedly noted as one