American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald once lamented, ``Though the Jazz Age continued, it became less and less an affair of youth. The sequel was like a children's party taken over by the elders.''

Decades later, at the end of his life, jazz icon Miles Davis echoed this resistance to the canonization of jazz when he told an interviewer, ``A legend is an old man with a cane known for what he used to do. I'm still doing it.''

Trumpeter and composer, Eric Vloeimans seems to channel these American greats when he insists that jazz must be what some would label an oxymoron: ''serious fun.'' Presented by Tigertail Productions, the Dutch native's trio, Fugimundi, hits Miami Beach's Byron Carlyle Theater on Friday night -- the second stop on the group's first U.S. tour.

Speaking to The Miami Herald from his home in Rotterdam, Vloeimans is gregarious and a bit irreverent: ''Music is not that special,'' he claims. ``What's special is how it's performed. My music should be played very spontaneously -- like it's three boys playing in the sand.''

Fugimundi, which includes Anton Goudsmit on guitar and pianist Harmen Fraanje, will play from its 2006 release Summersault (named for the playful way the notes roll over one another). The CD covers a wide emotional gamut from melancholic to frenetic, without losing intensity and inventiveness. The cornerstone is Vloeimans' startling diversity on the horn. One influence is American jazz trumpeter Jon Hassell, who Vloeimans says ``plays the trumpet like a flute.''

''I love a trumpet that you can play loud,'' Vloeimans, 45, says of his trademark technique, ``but I also like the trumpet soft, mellow and beautiful. I studied classical music to give it lightness, so you can play high notes over the wall, but it's still soft.''

Charlie Kaufman, a producer at WDNA-FM 88.9 who hosts a radio show under the name of Charlie K., clarifies that while Vloeimans' persona may be easygoing and carefree, he's a force to be reckoned with: ``Eric is a heavyweight. He's capable of tremendous extremes. In Summersault, he has a Gustav Mahler, acoustic, chamber-like thing going on and then he can turn around in the next track and pull off a number as lighthearted as a day on the beach.''

Kaufman adds that Goudsmit and Fraanje are equally on top of their game: ``You listen to them and think, this is a trio? They sound so full. They take their instruments and apply them in ways that are quite remarkable.''

It was in the conservatory where Vloeimans originally studied classical music that professor Peter Masseurs warned students of playing too seriously: 'He walked in the room and told us, `Ladies and gentleman -- each and every one of you has a little child inside. Now that you are here, don't let [the conservatory] take that from you.' '' Vloeimans adds: ``This touched me very much. In all the seriousness of studying music, you can lose the joy of playing.''

In addition to selections from Summersault, jazz fans will get an advance listen to the trio's new repertoire.

Later in the tour, Fugimundi will record these new tunes live at Yoshi's Jazz Club, a California hot spot in Oakland.

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