It couldn't happen to a nicer city, a spanking new, top of the line symphony hall for Seattle. A visit to the Emerald City last week had to include an exploration of Benaroya Hall, two and a half months new. Even without hearing music in it (Thanksgiving is musical dead week), it appears a job well done, and by all odds, ought to sound it.

At the heart of the hall, the S. Mark Taper Foundation Auditorium takes the conventional shoebox shape because that's the orthodox preference of acoustician Cyril Harris. This box has not one slant to it but hundreds--side boxes canted towards the stage, wall panels cunningly set at myriad angles to break up the surfaces for diffusion and in different sizes (each resonating with a different sound frequency). The room seats 1500 on the orchestra floor, 1000 in the three balcony and box levels, a proportion that keeps the overhangs shallow to avoid the sound trap underneath. Inevitably with the shoe-box design, it's a long shot from the seats at the aft end to the stage. This is mitigated, at least psychologically, by the angles of hall and stage walls and coffering of the ceiling, which draw the viewing nicely forward. The stage seems one with the hall. (See photo at the left)

Colors are a rich, reddish walnut on walls covered with a micro-thin veneer of African "makore" (from a single tree!), with a soft beige for ceiling, boxes, balcony and proscenium surfaces, old gold for the seats. The organ filling the stage rear wall is the facade of an 83-stop tracker action instrument to be completed by the noted C.B. Fisk company by July 2000. The hall presents a handsome, tasteful and unified impression. From the ambient sounds I heard in the hall, I would guess that the acoustics are on the live, bright side, as is characteristic of Harris' designs, e.g. the Kennedy Center Concert Hall (1971). The other performing space is the 540-seat Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall, intimate, warm with cherry wood. predominant.

LMN Architects of Seattle has a triumph in the lobby design, a high ceilinged room, curving around in a circular form. Great glass windows afford sweeping views of Puget Sound, the Seattle Art Museum directly across the street and the towering buildings in that quadrant of downtown Seattle. The spaciousness makes for gracious, easy circulation or, for a catered dinner, up to 500 can be served in this lobby. To insulate the auditorium from vibrations emanating from the railroad and metro (bus) tunnel beneath, it floats as a box within a box, with a nine-inch wide air gap, riding on 310 large rubber insulators, with 224 more to absorb any lateral motion. Beneath that is still another intervening layer--a 430-vehicle parking garage.

Running the length of the building on its up-hill side, is the Boeing Company Gallery, which remains open during the day to any and all, replete with a Starbucks Coffee café, naturally. At either end hangs two Dale Chihuly chandeliers, 15 to 20 feet tall, made of hundreds of white glass worm-like forms, Gorgon-like. A 12 foot high mural in nine panels by Robert Rauschenberg, "Echo," is placed over the entrance to the Taper Auditorium in the lobby. Outside stands Mark di Suvero's oddly named "Schubert Sonata," an impressive black steel pillar 22-feet high atop which steel plates move in response to the breezes.

All this, including ample facilities for the symphony musicians and staff, intelligently laid out, came in at $118.1 million. Jack Benaroya, a well-known Seattle real estate tycoon and philanthropist, provided the first $15 million of what became $85 million in corporate and private donations. The city invested $41 million and owns the building which the symphony built, leases and manages. There was one crucial additional factor--the Boeing Company loaned three of its top executives to supervise and manage the construction. That had everything to do with its efficiency and effectiveness of the outcome.

The Seattle Symphony deserves it. Since it opened the Seattle World's Fair auditorium in 1962, it has had to make its home in that building, subsequently called the Seattle Center Opera House. With 3100 seats, it was too big by far and its acoustics were not suited to symphony. Worse, because of the schedules for the opera and ballet, for which the Seattle Symphony musicians played, the Symphony was limited to playing its regular concerts on Monday and Tuesday nights.

Despite that, Gerard Schwarz, music director since 1985, has done a remarkable job, performing more American music, I believe, than any other major orchestra. Of the Seattle Symphony's more than 70 CDs, mostly on the Delos label, 39 feature music by American composers. To be sure, some of those whom Schwarz emphasizes are not on my recommended list, but then, his list is not reissues of the latter day golden-oldies either. Seattle has a good thing going, and with this hall, it's going to get a lot better.

What I like about Seattle is that it's original, decidedly unlike any other city, very appealing in personality, facilities, amazing setting and style. With a good cup of coffee never more than 100 feet away, how bad can it be? (I think it's against the law to serve "urn" coffee there.) Now through January, there's a beautifully mounted exhibit, "Egypt, Gift of the Nile," at the Art Museum, and of course shopping and restaurants that won't quit. All the nice features are not centered down town by a long shot. Different areas offer all manner of attractive diversions. Saturday night, almost by chance, we dropped into a tiny Italian restaurant, "Pontevecchio" in the charming Fremont district, and got not just a fine dinner, but a first-rate cabaret show: two excellent guitarists, Jaeger and Vassilli and a splendid flamenco dancer, Encarnacion, as good as they come. I thought for a moment I was in Europe.