Han Bennink was feeling frisky. Onstage with pianist Misha Mengelberg and saxophonist Kenny Millions at the Hollywood Central Performing Arts Center in 2007, the legendary Dutch jazz drummer displayed the mischievous wit and childlike exuberance for which he's long been revered. Variously, he bounced a drumstick and caught it in mid-air, swung his foot atop his snare, percussively beat his ruddy cheeks and even created shadow puppets on the wall behind him.

Of course, in the same show he sensitively and creatively engaged in the three-way musical conversation taking place onstage, punctuating and commenting on his colleagues' statements with dazzling acuity while continually ratcheting up the excitement.

``I'm very much aware that you have to play for people. And when you play for people that pay for it, it's a little bit of a show, a performance,'' Bennink explained recently from his home in Amsterdam, where he was preparing to take his newly formed Third Man Trio for a U.S tour. The group stops at the Byron Carlyle Theater in Miami Beach on Saturday.

``[I have] nothing against it when people laugh at my outrageous behavior,'' he adds, ``but I don't do it to be funny. When there's no space in the music to [goof around], I definitely will not be doing that.''

It was this free-wheeling sensibility that first attracted Millions to Bennink and Mengelberg, whom he began playing with after moving to Amsterdam from New York in 1978. The drummer and pianist had gained renown as leaders of the European avant-garde jazz movement, particularly after founding the Instant Composers Pool, a collective of progressive improvisers, in 1967 with saxophonist Willem Breuker.

``When we started working together 30 years ago, [Bennink] was flying off the walls,'' says Millions, who moved to South Florida in the mid-1980s and now owns and operates Sushi Blues Cafe and Blue Monk Lounge in Hollywood with his wife, Junko Maslak. ``It was total madness onstage, not just musically, but visually. It was so much fun, man.''

European audiences, he explains, ``like the theatrical aspect of a performance, whereas in America, the jazz musicians were very stoic, very serious. It was like liberation playing with those guys.''

Millions invited Bennink and Mengelberg to perform with him at the Hollywood Central Performing Arts Center in 2007, where Bennink's antics took some audience members by surprise.

``I've seen him light a fire in his high-hat, you know, emit smoke signals,'' says Third Man Trio accordionist Will Holshouser, who admits that the drummer sometimes frightens audiences. ``But after they get over it, they love him. There's something elemental: He's so glad to be there and he's giving them so much, and he's funny, which puts them at ease. And I think it helps them enjoy his music, which sometimes can be kind of abstract.''

At age 67, Bennink has built a reputation as a wild entertainer and pioneer of what he calls ``instantly composed music.'' He detests the oft-used ``free jazz'' label. For drummers who eschew metered playing, he says they would get the same results if they simply left their drums out in a hailstorm.

Or a cheese shop. In 2005, Bennink participated in conceptual artist Walter Willem's Cheese Diptych, an installation that required him to play a drum kit made from cheese. His unease is evident in a YouTube video, at least until he makes his way to a real drum kit and the sheer joy of playing lights up his Nordic features.

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