The newly-formed Mariachi Oro qualified for the State Mariachi Festival at the UIL Regional Mariachi contest on Jan. 28. They will perform at the State Festival in Seguin, Texas during the weekend of Feb. 25. Co-founded by seniors Karyssa Almanzan and Gianna Newberry, the Mariachi Oro provides students with a platform to learn about Mexican music culture and history and perform it for their community and on a competitive level.

“I grew up listening to mariachi music because my mom’s family is Mexican,” said senior and co-founder Gianna Newberry. “It would be playing at every party, every quinceañera, and every wedding.”

Mariachi is a genre of music originating from western regions of Mexico. Mariachi bands are typically composed of multiple violins, trumpets, and guitars joined by instruments such as the guitarron and vihuela while vocalists sing along.

“I love the style of music because we get to have so much fun with it,” senior and violinist Sophia Gonzalez said. “We get to go all out and just be really loud.”

During club activities, students usually learn about mariachi history and musical composition, in addition to learning new music and rehearsing for concerts and competitions.

“We wanted to bring the opportunity for students to connect with their culture and heritage to Coronado,” said senior and co-founder Karyssa Almanzan. “We thought that this would be especially important since we live so close to the border and have a large population of Mexican-American students here.”

On Jan. 28, the Mariachi Oro performed at the UIL Regional Competition With mariachi ensembles from across the district at Eastwood High School.

“Leading up to the competition we practiced extensively”, Gonzalez said. “We ran through our pieces for hours after school for weeks and tried to perfect them.”

Although it is their first year as an official ensemble, the group will accompany larger and more experienced groups like Chapin High’s “Mariachi El Capitan”  and Americas High’s “Mariachi Los Pioneros” to the State competition.

“Given that it was our first year and we only had 10 performers, we were pretty anxious,” senior and violinist Sophia Gonzalez said. “In the end, we just decided to have fun with it and because of that we ended up qualifying for State.”

The competition consisted of the ensemble playing three pieces for a panel of judges who evaluated their performance based on musicianship and style.

“We had 10 minutes to perform from the first note of our first piece to the last note of our third piece,” Newberry said. “The judging criteria is specific as they pay attention to our stance as we perform and we are required to play the music from memory.”

The UIL Regional Contest was their first official competitive performance as an ensemble.

“Performing as the first Coronado mariachi ensemble ever was extremely exciting for all of us,” Newberry said. “When we got on stage, I remember thinking that I wanted to show the judges and the audience how talented all of the members of our ensemble are.”

On the state level, they will face even larger and more experienced ensembles from eastern regions of Texas, which they hope will not diminish their chances of receiving a high rating.

“Our most immediate concern is the number of bigger and more experienced groups from all over Texas,” Newberry said. “They sound beyond amazing. But since it’s our first year I think it’s most important that we just try to have fun with it.”

In the weeks leading up to the State Festival, the group hopes to clean up their pieces and ease their performance anxiety to maximize their chances of receiving a high rating at the festival.

“We have to work on making our sound more clear, since there are so few of us our sound tends to get muddled,” Gonzalez said. “We also need to calm our nerves when we get up on stage, there’s no room for nerves when we perform.”

The UIL State Mariachi Festival will take place from Feb. 25-26, in Seguin, Texas.