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.

``That was not my most-favorite thing,'' he says ruefully. ``Every f---ing cheese is sounding like a f---ing cheese. If you hit an Old Amsterdammer or a Parmesan cheese . . . it's a lump of fat. The sounds were made by a guy [backstage] who had contact microphones on the cheeses. But sometimes you have to be a whore for the music business.''

Still, Bennink drew a line in the cheese: When Jay Leno invited him to play the custom-made kit on The Tonight Show, he turned him down. Although Bennink possesses an absurdist streak a mile wide, the drummer did not want to debase his craft with what he deemed a less-than stellar musical display.

Bennink is steeped in jazz tradition. By the early '60s, he was the drummer of choice for American jazz greats of the hard-bop era -- such as Johnny Griffin, Wes Montgomery and Sonny Rollins -- when they toured Holland. !!BEGIN TAG!! a16 !!END TAG!! Last Date.

By the mid-'60s, Bennink and Mengelberg picked up on the innovations of avant-gardists such as Albert Ayler and Cecil Taylor while adding their own European sensibilities. In addition to the Instant Composers Pool, Bennink worked with rigorously anti-commercial groups such as the Globe Unity Orchestra, an avant-garde collective that included pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach and saxophonist Peter Brotzmann.

Even with such credentials, Bennink refuses to limit himself to any one style of music. After his 2007 Hollywood performance, he accompanied Millions back to Sushi Blues and sat in with Gypsy Blue, a band that plays Gypsy jazz from the 1930s and '40s.

``He wanted to play. I didn't ask him,'' Millions says. ``He just felt the swing. He's of that generation, and he can swing on those brushes like crazy.''

This interest is further reflected in Bennink's new Third Man Trio, which features longtime collaborator Michael Moore on sax and clarinet and Holshouser on accordion. The younger Holshouser is the new guy, or ``third man,'' replacing cellist Ernst Reijseger, who worked with Bennink and Moore in the long-running Clusone Trio.

Given their predilections, the musicians leave plenty of room for spontaneous invention, but also play a repertoire that includes tunes such as Duke Ellington's Purple Gazelle and Earl Hines' Rosetta. Moore, a California native, has lived in Amsterdam for decades and also brings a European sensibility to the proceedings, as does the presence of the accordion and Bennink's interest in Scottish reels and Swiss martial music.

``What those guys have done over the years in terms of combining free improvisation with folk tunes and jazz tunes, they have a particular way of doing it in Holland that's really different from everywhere else,'' says Holshouser, who has played everything from Cajun-zydeco to Klezmer to African music. ``It's very refreshing to American ears. Of course, I love jazz, but the way they do it in Holland has a real special flavor.''

Bennink's role in mapping out the improvisational landscape over the past several decades was recognized in 2008 when he was awarded the Hans Koller European Jazz Prize. Earlier this month, a new documentary of the drummer premiered at the Follow the Sound festival in Belgium.

Understandably pleased with the current attention, Bennink nonetheless continues to scrap for gigs, even going through the difficult and expensive process of attaining work permits for his U.S. tours, so that he can continue to play whatever -- and with whomever -- he likes.

Bennink sees nothing incongruous in a dedicated avant-gardist's participation in a project such as Third Man Trio. ``People say to me, `You're getting old and old-fashioned,' '' he says. ``If I had a choice, I would have given my life to have been like Louis Armstrong, because he's my biggest hero. I don't like to be in a box. I just like to jump from box to box.''

Join the discussion

The Miami Herald is pleased to provide this opportunity to share information, experiences and observations about what's in the news. Some of the comments may be reprinted elsewhere in the site or in the newspaper. We encourage lively, open debate on the issues of the day, and ask that you refrain from profanity, hate speech, personal comments and remarks that are off point. In order to post comments, you must be a registered user of MiamiHerald.com. Your username will show along with the comments you post. Thank you for taking the time to offer your thoughts.

     Showing: Oldest first Newest first Most-recommended first Least-recommended first

@Nyx.AuthorDisplayName@ wrote on @Nyx.PostedAtTime@:

@Nyx.repliedToText@

@Nyx.replyAnswerText@

Reply to this Comment @Nyx.Recommender@ @Nyx.AbuseReporter@