When Seth Kibel blows into his clarinet, 3,000 years of history comes out.

As his cheeks expand, almost cartoonishly, the sound morphs from shtetl — small town — melodies to Tin Pan Alley standards, from the hora to the Torah. His range detours through New Orleans jazz, dips into Latin big bands, then returns to the Mississippi Delta Blues before landing back at something classical.

Music has to come from somewhere to go somewhere. And the klezmer Kibel favors comes from Jewish traditions.

The roots of klezmer — Yiddish for “instrument” and “song” — are in the Jewish folk music of Eastern Europe, though some say it began with the prophetess Miriam playing her tambourine in celebration after the Jewish people crossed the parted Red Sea in Exodus. It pervaded Jewish celebrations throughout Eastern Europe before the Holocaust.

Almost lost, klezmer saw a revival in the 1970s, mixing with folk, classical and jazz to revive a Jewish sound its forebears gave up for dead. It’s been called Jewish jazz and Yiddish swing.

Kibel, of Pikesville, takes it yet somewhere further. On stage, he is Borscht Belt humor meets dad jokes mixed with history professor, sharing stories about the Jewish lyricists and librettists who wrote for Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. Of the famously secular Gershwin (born Jacob Gershowitz), Kibel quips a famous saying about Gershwin and synagogues: “You couldn’t get George into shul, but you couldn’t get the shul out of George.”

He takes the clarinet apart while playing, a trick he calls “invisible clarinet,” until he is down to the mouthpiece. Whether he’s performing at a high-end jazz club or in a synagogue basement, the audience often spontaneously circle dances — a hora — as though at a Jewish wedding. And after he has his way with the woodwind, he’ll pick up the saxophone or the flute and try them next.

“He can make that clarinet cry,” said pianist Sean Lane, who frequently plays with Kibel. “And because he is so good at playing it, he gives that extra level of emotion to the music.”

Kibel, who likes to say he’s “musically promiscuous” and plays just about every genre, has been leading regional klezmer bands like the Alexandria Kleztet and Seth Kibel and the Kleztet since the early 2000s, when he moved to Baltimore with his wife, journalist Sandy Alexander. Kibel figured he’d eventually go to law school. In the meantime, though, the pair had two children, Will and Josie, and Kibel arranged his gigs to be home with them during the day.

He became more in demand after 2016, when he recorded “Songs of Snark and Despair,” a Randy Newman-esque entry into the resistance movement after the first term of President Donald Trump. With his children older, he began to travel more, performing with a bassist, guitarist, drummer and jazz singer.

Then, in 2020, the pandemic hit, and Alexander was diagnosed with breast cancer. He spent the next four years caring for her and his family. When she died, in 2024, Will was in college, and Josie was about to graduate from high school. Kibel could tour; he could record. Nothing was holding him back. His only responsibility was to a turtle named Willard he and Alexander adopted in 1996.

His new album, “Clarinet...without a Net,” reflects both his bold style of playing and his go-for-broke attitude. There’s no backup plan. He’s not going to law school.

Lane likes to joke that Kibel’s next album should be called, “all my stalkers have walkers,” an homage to the many elderly Jewish ladies who kvell, or burst with pride, over Kibel. But they both know that while gigs at the Library of Congress are swell, it’s the Jewish wedding, bar mitzvah, senior center and synagogue business that put the brisket on the table.

“I’m not going to lie,” Kibel said over matzoh ball soup at The Essen Room. “Klezmer’s been good to me.”

Kibel started at Cornell University as an American Studies major, then found playing with bands in Ithaca more interesting. He turned to Jewish music after spotting a sign on campus: “Make your Bubbie and Zayde kvell — join a Klezmer band."

Unfamiliar with the genre, he headed to the school’s music library.

“I fell in love with what I heard,” Kibel said. “I loved the energy, the excitement. Even though what I was hearing was 50, 60, 70 years old, it felt very fresh.”

Kibel joined the band, but he also put his American Studies degree to use to learn klezmer’s history.

Between 1880 and 1924, two and a half million Jewish immigrants came to the United States. Most settled in New York and held on to their culture. They read Yiddish newspapers, listened to Yiddish radio and danced to Jewish music. The second generation assimilated, with many Jews intermarrying and becoming part of a diverse melting pot. The third generation yearned to reclaim that culture, especially as immigration quotas became the talk of politics.

Nothing revived Jewish music more than “Fiddler on the Roof.” Kibel jokes that, if only a clarinetist had been on that roof instead, he would be a rich man. The 1964 Broadway performance spawned a klezmer revolution and introduced the secular world to Jewish culture. Already, musicians were reviving jazz, blues and country. Klezmer was, in a way, late, Kibel said. But when it arrived, it arrived big. The Klezmatics, the most famous band in the genre, have performed with Itzhak Perlman.

At a recent concert, Rabbi Yerachmiel Shapiro of Moses Montefiore Ashe Emunah danced as Kibel announced a “freilach” — Yiddish for happy song — was up next.

Being Jewish lately, Shapiro said, has not been easy. Antisemitism is surging, and Jewish students report not feeling safe on campuses. The yearning and joy coming from the clarinet can’t heal all wounds. But, throughout history, it has been a constant balm.

“The culture of the people of Eastern Europe, the Jewish people, got through some very rough times,” Shapiro said. “And to get them through, they had faith, yes, but they also had some very good music.”