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An ad in the Village Voice in 1986 drew together several musicians who were tantalized by the idea of forming a klezmer band -- and five of the original members are still with the band they created, the Klezmatics. The group will perform a Hanukkah concert at SOPAC, the South Orange Performing Arts Center, Dec. 10.

The Klezmatics were thrilled to delve into the Jewish, Ashkenazic klezmer tradition, music they found to be fun, vital, and compelling. "At the beginning, most of us just wanted to perform the music, to play it in a straight, old-fashioned way," said Frank London, the group's trumpet and keyboard player.

As they came into their own, the Klezmatics realized they could put their own spin on the music, as they responded to influences in both mainstream and Jewish culture. Through this engagement with the world around them and their own roots, the Klezmatics are trying to create "something that means something to our lives and to other people's lives," said London.

For London, who grew up as a Long Island Reform Jew, his Judaism has evolved with his music.

"What's wonderful is that through the music, I actually encountered a much deeper world of Jewish spirituality," he said, noting that he and another band member, Lorin Sklamberg, were performing a November concert of Jewish spiritual music, with Hassidic and Jewish mystical roots, in Gainesville, Fla.

For the Klezmatics, music is an organic outgrowth and reflection of Jewish culture in its entirety.

"The Klezmatics have always made a point of addressing music in the larger context -- not music separate from people," said London. As a result, the group performs songs of social justice as well as songs of mysticism, belief, and faith.

The Klezmatics' commitment to the Jewish value of tikkun olam, making the world a better place, led them to explore the work of other musicians with similar interests, one of whom was Woody Guthrie.

"He was also a musician who was more than musician, but also an active member of his society," said London.

Guthrie's music made its way into the Klezmatics repertoire after a propitious encounter after a concert. Having recorded an album with Itzhak Perlman and three other klezmer groups in 1995 that raised the awareness of klezmer music in the United States, the Klezmatics were again performing with Perlman. After the concert they were introduced to Nora Guthrie, Woody Guthrie's daughter. Totally coincidentally they had just played a song by Nora's grandmother, on her mother's side, who was the influential Yiddish poet Aliza Greenblatt.

Nora Guthrie made a shidduch, a match, between the Klezmatics and Woody Guthrie's music, said London. When Woody Guthrie died, said London, "he left stacks of words, but no one knew what the melodies were." Among these were eight Hanukkah songs, written in the style of Guthrie's children's songs like "Let's Take a Ride in My Car, Car," and Nora Guthrie invited the Klezmatics to put these and other examples of Woody's Jewish songs to music.

Of the Hanukkah songs, London said, "They are simple, repetitive songs, with some of the most beautiful poetry I've ever heard about Hanukkah -- from a universal, spiritual American perspective, not Eastern Europe." He offered the following line from one of the songs as a sample: "Hanukkah candles, spread your flames so I won't be sad no more."

The Klezmatics' December concert at SOPAC will be a celebration of Hanukkah. The Klezmatics especially appreciate the Hanukkah tours they have done the last couple of years as an opportunity to perform Woody Guthrie's Hanukkah songs.

The concert will also include, said London, "standard klezmer music that starts with traditional old Yiddish music played in a very deeply authentic way, based on deep study and attachment to the content." The audience will also hear "songs of drinking; songs of protest, of love, and of celebration, dances, meditative music, and jazzy music that amplifies the entire breadth of East European Jewish culture."

The Klezmatics started out playing at clubs and parties in New York. In 1988, they got their first big break -- an invitation to play at the first annual Heimatklänge Festival in Berlin, one of the first celebrations of "world music."

In those early days the band drew on klezmer bands of the 1930s and 1940s and also developed the broad themes that have formed their musical choices: a commitment to spoken Yiddish, an affirmation of socialist anthems of Eastern Europe, and an activism focused particularly on human rights.

The Klezmatics' music was evolving, blending in multi-ethnic and cultural influences in New York as well as punk, jazz, and classical strains. They also began to emphasize rhythm over pure melody. Referring to an album of this period, "Rhythm & Jews," the Klezmatics' Web site notes, "This was also the first time 'Jew' appeared on the cover of a klezmer album. By using the word, the band was boldly asserting their own brand of cultural pride: Jew Positive, a non-exclusionary belief that to find common ground with other traditions, they first had to unabashedly embrace their own."

In 1994, the Klezmatics recorded a chorus of native Yiddish speakers singing an old socialist anthem, "In kamf" (In Struggle), for the soundtrack of an AIDS epidemic documentary "Fast Trip Long Drop" focusing on a gay Jewish man. In 1995, the band wrote the score for Tony Kushner's adaptation of S. Ansky's "The Dybbuk."

The Klezmatics have also joined with Israeli singer Chava Alberstein to perform 15 Yiddish poems she had set to music, and they have collaborated with the Pilobolus Dance Theatre.

Right now, the band is taking what London calls "a retrospective moment," while a filmmaker is creating a documentary about the Klezmatics' career, based partly around a 20th anniversary concert at Town Hall in New York.

Looking back at his own past, London observed that people did not sing songs around the Sabbath and holiday tables, and if they did, it was mostly standard American Jewish songs. His experience with the Klezmatics, however, "opened a whole other choice of repertoire, expressing a wide degree of emotion, celebration, and observance."

Similarly, attendees at Klezmatics concerts can expect to expand their own musical horizons, suggested London.

"That's what's lovely about a Klezmatics program," London said. "It offers the audience different song choices that are much older than the ones they are familiar with and much newer."

The Klezmatics, Thursday, Dec. 10 at 8 p.m., at the South Orange Performing Arts Center, One SOPAC Way in South Orange. Tickets: $35, $45. To make reservations, visit www.sopacnow.org or call (973) 313-ARTS.