Passion 2013 calls for K1
Published: WORSHIP
WORLD: Atlanta’s Georgia Dome played host to Passion 2013, an annual conference of message and music that just raised over US$3.3 million to combat slavery and human trafficking worldwide. The four-day event is aimed at college aged Christians from all over the world.
Hosted by Passion City Church Founders Louie and Shelley Giglio, this year’s event drew students from 56 countries and 2,300 universities and featured a long list of contemporary performers, including Chris Tomlin, David Crowder, Matt Redman, Kari Jobe, Lacrae, Jesus Culture and numerous other artists, alongside notable evangelical speakers like John Piper, Judah Smith, Francis Chan and Louie Giglio.
With a 50 per cent increase in attendees, Mr Giglio’s Choice Ministries and Passion Conferences hired UK-based management company Black & White Live to oversee all production aspects of the event. To accommodate Passion 2013’s sound reinforcement needs, Rat Sound Systems supplied a full L-Acoustics system comprised of 108 K1, 96 V-Dosc, 36 Kara and 24 dV-Dosc elements, 40 SB28 sub enclosures, and 31 LA-RAK amplifier racks.
‘Last year’s Passion Conference attracted 42,000 students, so the Georgia Dome was set up in a half-house, end-stage configuration,’ says Rat Sound’s Jon Monson. ‘This year, however, over 65,000 students attended, so everything was mapped out from the start as a full 360-degree, in-the-round event.’
The main PA consisted of eight K1 arrays – six with 14 enclosures, and two with 12 – flown above the circular stage area, each paired with either three or six Kara cabinets below for down-fill. Three LA-RAKs were additionally positioned on the K-Bump rigging bar above each of the arrays to maximise floor space. For low-end reinforcement, 40 SB28 subwoofers were evenly distributed in groups of four around the outer ring of the stage and powered by 10 LA8.
On stage, LA8-powered 115XT HiQ wedges paired with SB18 subs served as monitors, while six Kiva and ten dV-Dosc were deployed as front-fills on the outer and inner rings, respectively. For delay, Rat Sound flew a ring of a dozen eight-box V-Dosc arrays powered by LA Series amplifiers to address the Dome’s upper seating areas.
According to Rat crew chief Ron Kimball, one of the primary challenges coming into this event was that the Georgia Dome was hosting American Football games on December 30th and December 31st. This meant that load-in couldn’t begin until 1am on January 1st – the first day of Passion 2013. With that in mind, the team did an initial load-in and production rehearsal from December 6th through 11th, after which they struck and stored the entire system until January 1st.
‘When we started re-loading the system back in, we knew we were up against the clock at all times,’ recalled Mr Kimball. ‘There were only 16 hours until the doors opened and all of the various departments – staging, rigging, lighting, video and so on – certainly had their work cut out for them. But knowing how easy the L-Acoustics system would fly – especially with the flown amp racks, which eliminated long speaker cable runs – I told production that they would not be waiting on audio, and they didn’t!’