By JON HAHN
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

It ain't Carnegie Hall, but the multistoried downtown City Center building's main court is softy filled with holiday string music. Even in the farthest corner, this stone, glass and metal chambered nautilus is filled with mellow. The deep resonance of a string bass behind the lyrical lines of a cello is plum pudding for the ear.

Welcome relief, indeed, from the taped elevator music that loops like some acoustic aversion therapy thing in our stores and offices and malls. This sound pulls my wife and me around and through a maze of storefronts until we stop at a landing between Up and Down escalators. There is a handsome young couple, she with her cello and he with his upright bass, the source of our shopping trip sound score.

And as we pause to listen, Traci and Spencer Hoveskeland shift from a Rossini duet to an upbeat version of "Silver Bells." While we stand entranced, I am looking for the ubiquitous cigar box or upended hat that collects the money for which most street-level musicians in Seattle play.

No cigar box or hat. We are a cut above the street level, literally and figuratively. The Bottom Line Duo, this husband-wife team, has been hired for this gig. From here, after a short break, they will play several hours in a trendy Seattle restaurant. In the early mornings next week, as you are schlepping your carry-ons across the Sea-Tac Airport lobby, Traci and Spencer will be filling one of those terminals with a hoped-for/paid-for sound of strings.

Every day, from private parties to public gigs and chamber music concerts, the Hoveskelands are proving the virtually impossible equation: two musicians making a living playing music in a homogenous mixture of venues. "Most of the musician couples we know are surviving because one spouse is working, usually teaching," said Traci. "We're very lucky."

And also working very hard to catch the lucky breaks. With Spencer able to transpose and rescore musical compositions for their rather unusual duet -- sometimes adding the wonderful guitar of Ray Wood -- they're able to grab a wide variety of jobs.

"Several years ago, we were hired by a man to play at a surprise dinner he had catered beneath a tent on the site of a home they were building out in the woods near Issaquah," Spencer recalled. "Not long after we got there, it began raining heavy. But they had their little banquet and we played during a rainstorm while the caterer served their meal."

Traci and Spencer, both 30, along with Delzy the cat and Rufus the terrier, moved recently from Marysville to the Tukwila area, which they say makes for much easier commutes to their various Seattle-area jobs. They squeeze themselves and their two large instruments into their Honda hatchback for jobs that take them over most of the Puget Sound area. They'll be playing in concert next year with the Port Angeles Symphony Orchestra, and maybe with a small group in Mexico. Spencer also finds time to play in "Shawn's Kugel," a local klezmer band comprising some of the old Mazeltones band.

"When we were in (Port Angeles) high school, our orchestra played in Carnegie Hall, and we're working our way back ... slowly!" Spencer quipped. They represented the Los Angeles Philharmonic as part of a quintet playing a fund-raiser aboard the QE2, and in Europe. When they were stranded in Brighton, England, with only backpacks and their instruments, a local taxi driver who'd never before heard classical music put them up for several days in his rental flat in exchange for a few private concerts, Shawn said.

"Many people hear us and say: 'I don't really like classical music, but I like you guys!'" Traci said.

"It's as though they forget they're hearing a bass and cello together, which is a bit unusual," Spencer contrapunted. This duet began building in their native Port Angeles, when a little boy and a little girl were seated together on a county fair carnival thrill ride. Years later, after they'd begun playing elbow-to-elbow in the local school orchestra, they learned from relatives the details of that first county fair meeting. But by the end of high school, they were already more than a musical duo.

They were married almost 12 years ago, when both were freshmen music majors at Western Washington University, and partially supported themselves by playing in a rock band, primarily doing gigs in Vancouver, B.C. "Spencer had played a lot of guitar up till then, and he taught me how to play bass guitar with the group," Traci said, with a bit of amusement. Not embarrassed, just sort of tickled that she could admit it.