The lively sounds of klezmer filled the theater at the Leon & Toby Cooperman JCC, Ross Family Campus, West Orange, when Klezmerfest performed there the afternoon of June 5.

The five-member group includes clarinetist/flutist Greg Wall, trumpeter Jordan Hirsch, accordionist Zev Zions, string bassist Brian Glassman, and timpanist Aaron Alexander.

According to the charming Wall — the ensemble's "chairman" and loquacious leader — the Klezmerfest has performed and recorded with many other groups and in many other venues.

A resident of Livingston, Wall himself has an impressive record of musical achievements. Locally, Wall, who is also a saxophonist and composer, is the artistic director of the JCC MetroWest New Jersey Jewish Music Festival and jazz artist-in-residence for the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Equally fluent in the jazz and world music idioms, he performs frequently at top venues throughout North America and Europe and his critically acclaimed release From the Belly of Abraham, with Hasidic New Wave and Senegalese master drummers Yakar Rhythms was named one of the 10 best CDs of 2002 by Jazz Times magazine.

His collaboration since 1999 with New Jersey's Carolyn Dorfman Dance Company has resulted in a number of commissioned scores, including The Klezmer Sketch.

He's even been on the silver screen, serving as the musical voice of James Earl Jones in the film On the QT.

At the JCC, among the many instrumental songs Klezmerfest played were "Wedding Dance," "Russian Sher/Baym Rebens Sudeh," "Der Heyser Tartar," "Doyne Zhok," and the lively, Rumanian-rhythmed "Freylach."

The essence of the program came from the traditions of Eastern European Jewish life. (The word "klezmer" itself is a fusing of "klei zemer," "musical instruments"). The klezmorim originated in the Middle Ages, when the troubadours' epics of chivalry and biblical paraphrases in Yiddish were set to Hebrew melodies and modes.)

By the 16th century, the klezmorim were performing as professionals, but without formal training. Playing at synagogues and festivals the folk-tunes of their people by ear, they provided the music for celebratory dancing, enlivened weddings and holidays like Hanukka and Purim, and created musical jubilation when a new Torah scroll was dedicated.

In the 1800s, outside influences had little effect upon the traditional way of life in the Jewish communities. As a result, the Yiddish language became the basis of a tremendous outpouring of song that combined liturgical tunes ("neginot") with simple melodies and set rhythms on an uncluttered foundation. The music might be joyous or sad, uplifting or bitter-sweet — yet always, shining through its folk-idiom drawn from Polish, German, Hungarian, Russian, or Rumanian, it was uniquely, inimitably Jewish.

At the turn of the last century through the years of the First World War and the '20s and '30s, many of Europe's Jewish folk musicians were among the waves of immigrants to the United States. Later, those who remained in Europe were wiped out by the Nazis. But those who managed to come here often became involved in the Yiddish theater or retained the role of traditional wedding performers.

The 21st century has seen an explosion of the klezmer tradition, often creatively fused with other musical forms. Klezmerfest is an outstanding contributor to this recent flourishing and reinterpretation of a time-honored musical tradition.