Michael Brecker, the jazz saxophonist who won 11 Grammy Awards and was considered the most influential tenor player of his generation, died Saturday at a hospital in New York. He was 57.

The cause of death, according to his manager, Darryl Pitt, was leukemia, the result of Brecker’s struggle with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), a form of cancer.

Influenced by John Coltrane and Wayne Shorter, Brecker transformed what he had learned from these two jazz icons, added his fascination with the timbres of rock music and rock guitar, and enhanced it with a unique, immediately recognizable sound.

The combination was magic for young players eager to approach jazz from a perspective reflecting their time and their generation. Over the past two decades, Brecker’s playing had a powerful effect on such established artists as Chris Potter and Bob Mintzer, as well as a growing wave of emerging players.

Like many jazz artists, Brecker was an active studio musician. But the scale of his appearances as a sideman was remarkable — more than 900 recordings with artists ranging from Frank Sinatra, James Brown and Simon & Garfunkel to Frank Zappa, Laura Nyro, and Funkadelic.

His warm-toned lyrical solo on James Taylor’s “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight” in 1972 was a breakthrough performance, introducing him to legions of fans unfamiliar with his early work with his brother, trumpeter Randy Brecker, in the jazz-rock fusion band Dream.

Brecker subsequently re-recorded “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight” — again featuring Taylor’s vocal in a drastically re-imagined version of the tune — on his double Grammy-award-winning 2001 CD “The Ballad Book.”

A-list studio gigs may have paid the rent, but Brecker was always in touch with jazz. In the early 1970s, he played hard bop with pianist Horace Silver and fusion with drummer Billy Cobham. The Brecker Brothers Band, formed with Randy in 1975, was a fusion pathfinder, searching out — and frequently finding — common ground between Jimi Hendrix, Thelonious Monk, and Sly Stone.

It wasn’t until 1987 that Brecker — at age 38 — finally released the first album under his own name. The appropriately titled “Michael Brecker” won jazz album of the year awards in Down Beat and Jazziz magazines. It was the first of a string of impressive CDs that ranged from the straight-ahead swing of his first two releases — “Michael Brecker” and “Don’t Try This at Home” with their all-star lineups (guitarist Pat Metheny, bassist Charlie Haden, drummer Jack DeJohnette, pianist Herbie Hancock) — to the gutsy, in-thepocket drive of “Two Blocks From the Edge” and the intimacy of “The Ballad Book.”

On “Wide Angles,” released in 2003, his inventive compositional imagination, generally in the background on his small ensemble outings, is given an opportunity to flourish via the instrumentation of his “Quindectet,” a 15-piece ensemble. The CD, which was awarded Grammys for best large jazz ensemble and best instrumental arrangement, is a poignant reminder of an aspect of Brecker’s talent that will now remain unfulfilled.

His last studio outing, completed two weeks ago, will be released in June 2007 on Heads Up International. Not yet titled, it features Hancock, Metheny, DeJohnette, pianist Brad Mehldau, and bassist John Patitucci.

It was, according to Mr. Pitt, one of the things, along with the love of his family, “that helped keep him alive.”

Brecker is survived by his wife, Susan; children Jessica and Sam; brother Randy of Manhattan, and his sister, Emily Brecker Greenberg.