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It was one of the busiest weekends yet for El Paso bands, with three separate contests taking place on Saturday. The end result was some great finishes for our local groups.

The first contest of the weekend was the 4-A Area contest in Lubbock. Mountain View and Clint represented El Paso, but neither band was able to advance past the preliminary round.

The largest contest of the season was simultaneously happening in Las Cruces. The 41st annual Tournament of Bands took place with some outstanding results for our local groups.28 bands took the field in 4 classes with the following results.

In preliminary Class B Awards, Irvin won Outstanding Music Execution, Burges won Outstanding Percussion, Alamogordo won Best colorguard, and Jeff/Silva won the Drum Major award. Riverside finished third, Irvin finished second, and Alamogordo finished in first place.

In preliminary Class A , Eastlake High School took Music Execution, Percussion, and Colorguard, while Parkland High School took home the Drum Major award. Top finishers were Las Cruces High School in third, Bel Air in second, and Eastlake in the top spot.

In preliminary Class AA, Hanks swept all captions. Cleveland High School from Rio Rancho, New Mexico, came in third, while Onate finished second and Hanks took the top spot.

The 10 bands advancing to finals were Albuquerque Eldorado, Las Cruces, Cleveland, Del Valle, Eastwood, Eastlake, Horizon, Onate, Bel Air, and Hanks High Schools.

Hanks High School ended the night as Grand Champions with their show ‘Pocket Full of Poseys.’ Other finalist finishes included Eastlake in second place, with Onate High School from Las Cruces in third and Bel Air High School finishing fourth. Cleveland was in 5th place, followed by Horizon High in 6th, Eastwood in 7th, and Del Valle in 8th. Las Cruces High finished 9th and Albuquerque Eldorao finished 10th.

Perhaps the biggest news of the days is El Paso has both the advancing bands from the Area A 6-A marching band contest. 14 bands competed in prelims, with seven bands advancing to finals. El Paso bands in finals included Americas, Coronado, Montwood, and Pebble Hills.

At the end of the second and final round of competition, Pebble Hills came in first, followed closely by Montwood. These two bands, both from the Socorro ISD, will now travel to San Antonio to represent West Texas at the State marching band contest.

Prelims for the 6-A contest will be held in the Alamodome on Monday, November 5, with the finals round taking place on Tuesday, November 6.

Directors of the Pebble Hills Spartan band are Maximo Sierra, Raul Chavira, Daniel Hunt, and Cecil Crabtree.

The Montwood “Mean Green” band is under the direction of Beto Pererz, Roman Lechuga, and Caitlyn Colette.

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Author – Lorraine Kubala

The complete schedule can be viewed on the ‘Musical Notes- The Blog’ page on Facebook.

27 bands took the field at Franklin High School Saturday, as El Paso ISD hosted their invitational contest for area marching bands.

Serving as adjudicators for the event were Valentino Leyba, Kevin Moreman, and Shawn Silva, all band directors in the Las Cruces Public Schools. Instrumental Coordinator Julio Castillo was the contest organizer.

Due to the large number of bands entered, the contest was divided into morning and afternoon sessions. An awards ceremony was held at 11:30 after the first 13 bands performed. After a lunch break, the afternoon saw another 14 bands take the field, capping the day with an awards ceremony for these bands at the final conclusion of the contest.

Receiving first divisions, which denotes a “Superior” performance, were Franklin, Riverside, Parkland, Hanks, Bel Air, Eastlake and Del Valle High Schools in the morning session, and Irvin, Burges, Americas, and Coronado High Schools in the afternoon.

Bands receiving second divisions, denoting an “excellent” performance, were Horizon, Eastwood, Ysleta, and Socorro High Schools in the morning, and El Paso, Andress, Jefferson Silva, and Chapin High Schools in the afternoon.

Bands receiving a third division, or “good” performance, were Canutillo, Anthony, Fabens, Clint, Bowie, San Elizario, and Austin High Schools.

This contest served as a tune up for the bands and was great for getting some last minute pointers from the judges before the UIL contest next Saturday. All the El Paso-area bands will compete in the state- sanctioned contest which this year will advance 2-, 4-, and 6-A bands to the Area marching band contests for each respective class.

Those contests will take place in Amarillo for the 2-As, Lubbock for the 4-As, and Odessa for the 6-As on October 27th.

Locally, there is plenty more action coming up in Band-tober. The aforementioned UIL contest is next Saturday, October 13, at the SAC. This contest will be for ratings, just as today’s contest was, with qualifying bands advancing to the Area round of contests on the 27th.

On October 20, bands from Texas and New Mexico will take the field again at the SAC for the SISD Marchfest. The Marchfest contest uses a 7- person judging panel and is a two-round contest.

After prelims, 6 bands from the small band class will advance to a finals round, while 8 bands in the large band class will advance. No division ratings are given at this contest. Instead, the bands are given numerical scores and ranked in first place, second place, and so on.

The experience of competing for those rankings will come in handy for the last weekend in October. The advancing bands attending the Area contests will be ranked, and the highest -placing bands will advance to the State marching band contest.

This contest is held at the Alamodome in San Antonio on November 5,6, and 7.

Meanwhile, most of those bands not advancing to Area contests will instead journey up to Las Cruces for the NMSU Tournament of Bands, also taking place on October 27th. This contest, too, uses a 7-person judging panel and a prelims/finals format.

The Tournament of Bands for many years has served as the penultimate contest for bragging rights around the area, and promises some amazing marching show action for local band fans.

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Author – Lorraine Kubala

The complete schedule can be viewed on the ‘Musical Notes- The Blog’ page on Facebook.  

Click here for a complete listing of all the ‘Bandtober’ Events

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Once again, the El Paso Herald-Post will be providing band fans with LIVE, STREAMING coverage of SISD’s Marchfest on October 20, 2018!   Our day-long coverage starts at 7:20 and goes on through the finals!

Creative thinkers at Burges and Coronado high schools earned top honors in their respective categories in the regional Destination Imagination competition, earning them a spot at state April 7-8 in Lubbock.

Burges and Coronado were among a dozen EPISD schools competing at the regional Destination Imagination competition last week at Eastlake High School. Burnet, Cielo Vista, Coldwell, Cooley, Douglass, Mesita, Polk, Whitaker, Zavala elementary schools and Magoffin Middle School also competed.

For Burges, going to state has become a tradition. They have been at least 13 times. The Mustang team won for Challenge B: Scientific Challenge Top Secret.

“Destination Imagination is a creative problem solving competition,” said coach James Towle. “Students act, sing, and dance, design and create costumes, design and build sets, write scripts, practice improve skills, learn and incorporate mechanical, technological, and chemical engineering, learn how to budget, and build their teamwork skills.”

A student of Towle’s once described the competition as “all of the elective classes on your campus built into one.”

Coronado’s Nadine Rivas calls DI an “international creative thinking group.”

“We do a lot of creative problem solving in DI,” Rivas said. “Our team had to write and act out a short skit which showed the repercussions of the color ‘pink’ disappearing.”

This is Coronado’s first venture to state, where they are competing in the fine arts challenge “Vanished.”

Finishing second in their respective challenges were teams from Cielo Vista and Douglas elementary schools. Mesita’s engineering team took third place in their challenge.

Coldwell received the Spirit of Discovery and Imagination Award for outstanding spirit, teamwork, volunteerism and sportsmanship.

“The recipients of this award are the ones who go out of their way to help others, making sacrifices not for themselves, but to give something to someone else,” said Julie Witte, a Guillen Middle School teacher who coordinates DI.

Burges High School also received the Renaissance Award for outstanding design, engineering, execution and performance.

According to DI organizers, “the Renaissance Award recognizes those who demonstrate extraordinary amounts of effort and preparation in their solutions or outstanding skill in engineering, design or performance. While the destination is creativity, these fellow travelers make the journey itself memorable.”