As a founding member of the Klezmatics, trumpeter Frank London has dedicated his life to making new Jewish music.

The insistently creative ensemble won a Grammy last year for best contemporary world music album. While steeped in klezmer, a genre that coalesced in 19th-century Eastern Europe, the Klezmatics create music unrestricted by geography and time. (Their collaborators range from saxophonist-composer John Zorn and Pilobolus Dance Theatre to Morocco's Master Musicians of Jajouka and violinist Itzhak Perlman.)

Which is why London is the ideal choice to be the first musician to receive the Jewish Music Festival's new Shofar Award, a tribute celebrating his vast contributions as a composer, player and bandleader. London opens the 23rd annual Jewish Music Festival on Saturday at Berkeley Rep's Roda Theatre with the West Coast premiere of "A Night in the Old Marketplace," a production based on the macabre 1907 Yiddish play by I.L. Peretz.

"Frank is probably the most prolific composer and bandleader and trumpeter on the Jewish music scene internationally," says Ellie Shapiro, the festival's founding director. "He needs to be known in the general music community for his contributions to American music."

While "A Night in the Old Marketplace" was originally conceived with Alexandra Aron as a fully staged musical, London has reinvented the work since its premiere last year in Philadelphia. He's replaced the cast of actors with a narrator (a role to be played on Saturday by KQED's Michael Krasny, the longtime host of the morning show "Forum") and put the focus squarely on his vivid score, which he wrote with lyricist Glen Berger.

Set in the Polish shtetl, Peretz's play is a dream-like ghost story in which the living, the dead and supernatural creatures interact freely, a tale inspired by medieval Jewish folk tales. Drawing on a range of influences, from jazz, klezmer, rock, European classical music, and Kurt Weill-esque songspeil (with the pop act They Might Be Giants thrown into the mix), London's score reflects the probing curiosity that marks his work with the Klezmatics.

His recording of the score for "A Night in the Old Marketplace" came out last year on the Soundbrush label, and for the new production he's distilled the CD's musical cast, featuring vocalists Charlotte Cohn (from Baz Lurmann's Broadway production of "La Bohème"), Melinda Blake, David Wall, Steve Hrycelak and the Klezmatics' Loren Sklamberg, Ron Caswell on tuba and bass, Brandon Seabrook on banjo, guitar and mandolin, Art Bailey on keyboards and accordion, and drummer Aaron Alexander.

After struggling with various approaches to Peretz's often ambiguous text, London feels that this version is the one he'll present around the world.

"It's a concert with narration, but it's not a staged reading," London says. "With a narrator you can leave a lot of room for the imagination. We want to keep people engaged in this story, with bringing the dead to life, without being too literal."

Running through March 30, the festival has become the nation's most significant Jewish music showcase. Among the artists featured this year are Cantor Benzion Miller, who brings his soaring tenor to Berkeley's Netivot Shalom on Sunday; and Teslim, a duo featuring violinist Kaila Flexer and Gari Hegedus on various strings playing traditional music from Greece, Turkey and the Middle East as well as originals inspired by Eastern Jewish cultures, at the First Unitarian Church in Oakland on Tuesday.

Golem, a six-piece Eastern European folk punk band based in New York, plays San Francisco's Rickshaw Stop on Wednesday. Led by singer-accordionist Annette Ezekiel, the combo reinterprets Jewish, Gypsy and Slavic folk songs.

"What's so cool about this festival is that it never sees Jewish music as a particular style," London says. "They're so good at keeping that umbrella large, and they make a point of presenting both local and international artists. I remember one time the Klezmatics played, and our guests were Ronnie Gilbert and Holly Near. The memory of playing 'Goodnight, Irene' with Ronnie Gilbert is one of the highlights of my musical career."

Next year London may well be saying much the same thing about the Ark, the project that represents the festival's most ambitious leap into the commissioning of new music. The concept is to bring a diverse group of artists together for a weeklong retreat, where they'll create the new work "Cyclical Rituals," set to debut at the festival's March 29 concert at the Jewish Community Center in San Francisco.

In addition to London, the musicians include Israeli mandolin master Avi Avital; Ukrainian singer-composer Mariana Sadovska; New Orleans Klezmer Allstars pianist Glenn Hartman; the Bay Area's Jewlia Eisenberg, leader of vocal ensemble Charming Hostess; blues-jazz guitarist John Schott; and bassist Stuart Brotman, a founding member of the ensembles Brave Old World and Veretski Pass.

Shapiro came up with the concept for the Ark last summer in Krakow, Poland, which hosts one of the world's largest Jewish Cultural Festivals. That event's all-night frenzy of creativity left her wondering about how to generate some of that energy in the Bay Area. The nine musicians selected for the Ark aren't all Jewish or focused on playing music traditionally identified with Jewish culture, but they're all working in styles that have intersected with Jewish culture.

"We see it as our role . . . to nurture artists, to provide an environment where new music can thrive," Shapiro says. "From the beginning, this isn't about musicians who are Jewish; it's about Jewish music writ large."Jewish Music Festival

Where: Various locations in Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco

Through: March 30

Information: (800) 838-3006, www.jewishmusicfestival.org