Originally published Saturday, December 4, 1999

By AMY E. NEVALA
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Played with the right emotion, music can lift listeners into the breeze. An art piece, one made of tons of steel and towering more than 20 feet high, captures that feeling outside Benaroya Hall in downtown Seattle.

"Schubert Sonata" is a 22-foot-high, 9,900-pound abstract sculpture that splays out into heavy curves and wedges. Topping the piece are unpainted steel plates that swivel in the wind swirling through the streets.

Artist Mark di Suvero's chunky steel works have been described as "fat men dancing with startling grace."

"Schubert Sonata" can be viewed outside or from within the lobby of the hall. Probably the best viewing point is on the University Street steps between Second and Third avenues. The piece sits on the Paccar Sculpture Terrace outside the hall's grand lobby.

"Schubert Sonata" is owned by the Seattle Art Museum and is a gift from Jon and Mary Shirley and the Virginia Wright Fund.

When you visit Benaroya Hall at 200 University St., don't stop with the di Suvero piece.

Inside the hall stretches Robert Rauschenberg's 45-foot-long, 12-foot-high image collage "Echo." The collage was reproduced through a vegetable dye process and transferred onto a laminate surface. The public can view the mural during free tours given Monday through Friday at noon and 1 pm .

In the hall's Boeing gallery are Dale Chihuly's clear and milky-white glass chandeliers, "Crystal Cascade," and Anna Valentina Murch's nine-panel colored light installation "Skytones."

Murch's piece is activated at night, set by computerized timer to release an array of colored tones against the white wall, from red-pinks to golds to cool blues. The Seattle Arts Commission financed the piece through its One Percent for Arts project.

Since it practically hits you in the head when you're back outside Benaroya Hall, you can't miss one of downtown Seattle's most revered art pieces, The Hammering Man.

Dedicated in 1992 for the Seattle Art Museum plaza at 100 University St., The Hammering Man salutes the American worker. The 48-foot sculpture of hollow fabricated steel hefts his motorized left arm four times a minute from 7 in the morning to 10 at night. He pounds daily except for Labor Day, when he gets a break.

Hey, every Seattleite deserves a day off. To go out and enjoy the city art, of course.