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During their first summer in Belleville, after moving from London, Ont., in 1987, Andy Sparling and his wife, Theresa, found themselves at the Waterfront Festival one evening. “And there’s this big, beautiful band playing under the moonlight on the end of the pier,” says Sparling, “with about 300 or 400 people around having a great time. It fired me up.”
That band was the Commodores Orchestra.
It was an evening, says Sparling, that took him all the way back to his childhood. When Sparling was nine, his father, Phil, played saxophone, clarinet, and oboe in a local big band after a stint overseas with the legendary RCAF Streamliners who put their lives on the line playing swing, jump, and jive for the troops. Sparling soon found himself tagging along with his father each summer, going on gigs, and setting up music stands at theatres and dancehall
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