At last night's jazz concert by the James Carter Quintet, I sat beside Stephen McLallen who was working the sound board. Yes, James on sax, Gerard Gibbs on keyboards, Dwight Adams on trumpet, Randy Armstrong on bass and Leonard King on drums were brilliant, but so was Stephen on sound. And if it hadn't been for him, we wouldn't have heard anything. Because, according to Stephen, we almost DIDN'T hear anything!

At the sound check at 4:30 p.m., the entire stage-left PA system went dead. So with only 3 1/2 hours until the performance, he and the other sound engineers had to scramble to build a new system! They cannibalized equipment from all over the Detroit Institute of Arts, brought it down to the theatre and performed major techie magic to make it work. And the audience never knew the difference.

Let's hear it for the unsung heroes of music!