Almost 30 years after his death, a major jazz composer is coming more sharply into view.

You've possibly written more standards than any other living jazz composer.

After law school, he had a brief career in Hollywood as a jazz composer.

By the mid-1980s he worked on his own and would become one of Norway's leading jazz composers.

He is considered one of the greatest jazz composers and arrangers.

Yet those opportunities are not open to jazz composers.

Our first six grants, in fact, went to jazz composers.

He also became a popular jazz composer in pre-war Czechoslovakia.

"A good young American jazz composer who would understand what I want to do," he muses.

That's impressive, but not so surprising; those elements have all become moving parts in a jazz composer's vocabulary.