Filling the Alexandria Room with billowing musical notes was Paul Ramunni on Saturday, February 16.

Several dozen heads turned toward the reedy sounds as he alternately played and talked about his experiences with the accordion and the many stories he has learned since childhood about the instrument and its players.

Mr Ramunni, founder of New England Accordion Connection & Museum Company and author of Accordion Stories From The Heart: A Collection Of Accordions From Around The World And Their Stories, Inspired By The Extraordinary People Who Played Them, offered a mini-concert/storytelling session Saturday afternoon.

“What are we doing here?” he asked the roughly 30 attendees. His story of becoming an accordion player is “one of discovery,” he said. But first, he added, “I’m going to soften you up with songs.

He placed on his lap one of many instruments he had with him that day; one hand pressed the keys while the other moved a bellows, pushing air across reeds. Sound swelled with tinkling notes.

“I’ve got about 500 to 600 accordions in my museum in Canaan,” he said, returning to his narrative. He opened his museum in October 2011, in a renovated space near his personal residence in North Canaan. In January 2017, he renovated additional space to create a studio and showroom for new and used accordions for sale.

Offering another song played on an “Italian model made in 1993,” he squeezed the tune “Lady of Spain.” Smiling at the applause, he cautioned, “Now you’re in the water.”

With another anecdote on his lips, Mr Ramunni said, “This is a two-beer story…”

“My mother traumatized me at age 10,” he said. His mother had told him then, “‘Your father and I want you to learn the accordion.’ In 1958 in Long Island, an accordion was not cool, but from [age] 10 to 17, I played for audiences.”

Abruptly, things changed. Mr Ramunni said, “At 17, the accordion went into the closet for 42 years.”

Years later, he shared, there was another change. It was 2008, and Mr Ramunni and his wife, Marcia, were in Vermont.

“I woke up, and I don’t know why — I had to play the accordion again,” he said.

He called a local clockmaker who “knew someone with an accordion,” and that person “had 100 of them on a shelf in the garage. Three hours later, I chose one.”

The man also had “piles of concertinas, rusted and falling apart,” Mr Ramunni said. “I kept stepping over them and felt funny about it.” Then the man told him, “They came form Nazi camps.”

Guards had left prisoners with the instruments, Mr Ramunni explained. “It was part of the propaganda, they showed pictures of people playing…”

His relationship with the accordion was back on. Mr Ramunni began collecting them at tag sales, etc., he said. “People don’t want to throw them out, Aunt Tillie had played it.” He also noticed that people brought accordions “places you’d never think to bring them.”

Somewhere along the way, “someone had said, put stories in a book,” he commented.

On a frigid day, “a guy in the cold with his wife in the car” stopped at the accordion museum.

Distracted that the man left his wife out in the cold, Mr Ramunni insisted the man bring her inside. She refused to come in, the man said. Mr Ramunni persisted.

Returning to the car, the man struggled to pull his wife out of it. “He finally got her out,” Mr Ramunni said.

“She came in, stopped, looked around, then she grabbed me. ‘Listen, listen to me — a coffee table book. Story, picture, turn page. Story, picture, turn page. Do it,’” the woman reportedly said. “‘Listen to her,’ her husband said.”

Mr Ramunni played another song, “Edelweiss,” which most guests recognized.

Picking up his talk again, he said, “I forgot to say, I hated my mom. Why was she making me learn this?” he said. He admits he bothered her for an answer. “Finally, she said it was something good, clean, wholesome. She knew something.”

Recalling his mother’s long-ago words, he said, “The accordion has kept that image.”

From the audience came a question about where the accordion was most popular.

“Eastern Europe, Russia,” Mr Ramunni said. And also — “You’ll fall off your chair,” he warned his guests — “China and North Korea. It’s huge.”

It is also popular along the “Tex-Mex border,” he said. He mentioned a more modern band, Counting Crows, which uses an accordion.

He next played “Old Man River,” before talking about the accordion’s origins in China. An emperor there had loved the sound of a certain bird at his window, Mr Ramunni said, adding that the emperor had demanded that someone “recreate the sound, or else!”

He talked about reeds, harmonicas, and other “blow” instruments. His wife, Marcia, walked through the guests, displaying a flutina from 1829. “People took them to war, carried it with them, played them. Night was the worst time, so they took out the flutina.”

Mr Ramunni said, “Then one day…” the polka broke out in France. “People loved it. And the accordion was there.”

He played a quick polka, saying, “People have been known to dance to this, so if you want to jump around, I encourage it.”

Copies of his recently released book were available for purchase Saturday afternoon, and the author signed them for anyone who asked. Admission to the mini concert and program admission was $5 per person, which was earmarked benefit Edmond Town Hall.

For those who missed his February 16 program — or those looking to enjoy more music and anecdotes — Angelo Paul Ramunni is scheduled for another program in Newtown next month. He will be at C.H. Booth Library, 25 Main Street, on Sunday, March 24, at 2 pm. There is no charge for the 60-minute program, but reservations are requested; call 203-426-4533 or visit chboothlibrary.org.