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Fremont Abbey Reaches its Community with Mackie

Seattle, WA— September 2016… Housed in the former St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Seattle’s nonprofit Fremont Abbey Arts Center offers arts and cultural experiences to people of all ages and incomes, focusing on local music, contemporary dance, visual art, spoken word, and storytelling.  It’s a hub for artists, students, and community members, with classes, concerts, workshops, and other events. In 2015, 1,642 adult artists and 103 youth artists participated, and annual attendance is more than 39,800.

Although the Center is equipped with a full-sized PA system, they needed a portable, high-quality sound system for events outside of its facility. “The Mackie® Reach™ PA has proven to be perfect for our youth artist outreach program,” asserts Cody Kilpatrick, who handles media, production, and booking for Fremont Abbey. “Our youth artists take it out and perform at large nonprofit and fundraiser events, especially events where people set up booths. We do a short set, get our artists exposure, and liven up the space.”

For these events, Reach’s ARC™ array technology is especially beneficial, delivering 150° of horizontal dispersion. Along with Reach’s 720W of amplification, this enables one Reach to cover a big, broad area. “It’s pretty cool because setup is minimal, it has the power to cover a lot of space, it’s easily portable, and it sounds great,” Kilpatrick enthuses. “The Reach has proven to be a simple, effective solution for our younger acts. The wireless functionality is something we’ve gotten used to, as well. With Mackie Connect™ app, we can control Reach from a phone. It’s very convenient.”

In addition to mobile applications, Reach has also turned out to be an excellent rehearsal system. “Using it for rehearsals was sort of a surprise,” Kilpatrick admits. “We have some bigger acts come in, and they need a small system. The Reach is a very good solution. The vocalists especially need to hear themselves in order to save their voices, and Reach’s EarShot™ personal monitoring system helps a lot.” EarShot provides side-facing, high-output, full-range monitor speakers—just right for rehearsal.

Fremont Abbey Arts Center artists continue to reach out to the community with help from the Mackie Reach. Most recently, they provided entertainment at donor Pecado Bueno restaurant’s Eastlake location. “Reach is just right for this sort of gig,” Kilpatrick observes. “You can keep the volume down, and it still sounds great and covers the whole room. The artists can still hear themselves, thanks to the monitoring system. It’s exactly the system we needed.”

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