Today, New York-based clarinetist David Krakauer is probably the world's prevalent soloist in the realm of klezmer -- an Eastern European Jewish folk style (short for "kley zemer," or "instruments of song") that has undergone a major resurgence and emerged with a distinctly international flavor in the past three decades.

But you don't get out of bed one morning as a child and suddenly devote yourself to playing klezmer. For Krakauer, who headlines tomorrow's Jewish Music Festival in Squirrel Hill, that was an almost accidental decision, stemming from his education in classical music and jazz.

"I went to the High School of Music and Arts [later immortalized in the movie 'Fame'] with people like [keyboardist/composer] Anthony Coleman," he recalls, "and was also studying with one of the great classical teachers, [the late] Leon Russianoff.

"I was pursuing a classical career. After I got out of college, I got my master's at Julliard and got involved in a lot of contemporary music."

But Krakauer increasingly found himself with a desire to play "off the page" in improvisational situations, and discovered the downtown avant-jazz scene, which overlapped into the klezmer revivalists. "By chance meetings and on a whim, I decided I wanted to do klezmer, and I gradually got deeper and deeper into it, working with the Klezmatics for seven years and then forming my own band."

Around the time Krakauer first came to Pittsburgh -- back in 1996 with the Knitting Factory-sponsored "Jews With Horns" tour -- he was organizing a group called Klezmer Madness, which has since recorded six albums. He was initially on John Zorn's famed avant-leaning Tzadik label, the most recent evidence being a CD recorded live at sessions Krakauer curated at the now-defunct New York venue Tonic and later on respected French jazz imprint Label Bleu.

The latest two albums, including 2006's "Bubbemeises: Lies My Grandma Told Me," have included an unusual guest musician -- Jewish-Canadian rapper So Called.

"I'll take the credit for bringing him out of his Montreal basement and getting him out on the concert stage," says Krakauer. "It's been great for me to do numerous collaborations, especially with people a generation younger than me. It's stimulating and wonderful."

One of the whippersnappers to which Krakauer is referring is 23-year-old Polish composer Wlad Marhulets, who has written a "crazy" klezmer concerto, which Krakauer will debut next fall. Wlad's contribution is only the tip of the iceberg, however. Noting Krakauer's tremendous dedication and passion for the form, numerous composers have stepped forward to write klezmer-flavored works for him ever since 1996, when the Kronos Quartet released an amazing interpretation of Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov's "Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind."

"That recording was very significant in terms of plotting the course of new Judaic music," he explains, "and Golijov was a real path blazer. The piece has been converted into a concerto, and I've been playing it around with various orchestras in the U.S. and Europe."

Golijov's work has already received a hearing in Pittsburgh, however, so Krakauer's main focus when he appears at the Squirrel Hill Jewish Community Center in the sixth annual Jewish Music Festival will be to interpret the "Klezmer Concerto" by Israeli-American composer Ofer Ben-Amots, as well as working in a few traditional klezmer arrangements with a string group populated by members of the Pittsburgh Symphony and Opera orchestra.

Ben-Amots, who has studied with Alberto Ginastera and George Crumb, is a composition professor at Colorado College who is influenced by both Yiddish and Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) cultural elements. "The music he wrote for me is very much inspired by traditional klezmer; it's mostly tonal and not at all far-out or experimental, so it does touch a broad audience.

"But it also has a healthy tinge of subtle surrealism; there are passages that have this mysterious quality to them."

And pursuant to mainstream appeal, Krakauer is quite heartened by how both John Zorn's "Radical Jewish Culture" and the now quite "middle-aged" klezmer revival have raised the eyebrows of foreign audiences. "This coming fall, there's going to be a major exhibition in Paris on Radical Jewish Culture, which is now being viewed through the lens of history."

Klezmer events are also bigger than ever. Not only is the interest in Europe still growing and crossing over with the explosion in Balkan/Gypsy folk bands, but also last April at New York's Carnegie Hall, the auditorium was packed with fans applauding the Klezmatics, Mikveh (violinist Alicia Svigals' all-star female group), Brave Old World and Krakauer's own Klezmer Madness.

On June 15, Kraukauer will share the Carnegie stage with such luminaries as Alan Alda, Tom Paxton, Arlo Guthrie and Peter Yarrow to celebrate the 85th birthday of titanic Jewish actor/folksinger Theodore Bikel (for sci-fi nerds: Bikel played Worf's dad on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and Ivanova's rabbi father on "Babylon 5").

Krakauer has also formed a new unit with So Called and Fred Wesley (James Brown's trombonist and arranger) called Abraham Incorporated, and they look forward to a tour and an album next year. "I'm super excited about bringing together these very strong cultural currents of African-American and Jewish expression," he says.

Yet the klezmer-classical crossover keeps him busy enough. "What has happened is that new composers are starting to embrace the musical language of klezmer. It's now more open to interpretation, and there's a certain universality to it.

"I do know that I was there at the beginning of it, but I don't know exactly where it's going to lead."