George Stelluto Interview

George Stelluto Interview

An interview with George Stelluto, the maestro for the Peoria Symphony Orchestra and a friend of Bob Gilmore.

George Stelluto is the musical director of the Peoria Symphony Orchestra. Stelluto shares stories about his close friend Bob Gilmore. Stelluto explains what Gilmore was like as a person as well as some of the stories Gilmore told him of his youth. Stelluto and Gilmore met through Gilmore's philanthropic work with the Peoria Symphony Orchestra.

Bob Gilmore Research Group.

George Stelluto

April 11th

English

Oral History

.mp3

36 minutes.

Shelby Dean 0:25
So my name is Shelby Dean. It is April 11th 2022 and I am here with

George Stelluto 0:32
George Stelluto, S T E L L U T. O. I'm the music director of the Peoria Symphony Orchestra.

Shelby Dean 0:41
Okay. So getting started, I just want to learn a little bit more about you.

George Stelluto 0:45
Are the levels okay?

Kevin Saucedo 0:46
Yup.

Shelby Dean 0:48
So at what age did you realize music was your passion?

George Stelluto 0:53
I can't even remember the age. I can only remember somebody giving me a LP of Vivaldi's music. And I just was fascinated by it and then started with that. So I must have been earlier than six I think.

Shelby Dean 1:15
And so what are some of your personal favorite highlights of your career?

George Stelluto 1:20
Last year, in August of 2021, I made my debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the Ravinia Festival, and an all Tchaikovsky program. That was a real highlight. I've also conducted the Juilliard Orchestra at Lincoln Center. Did a lot of conducting in Europe. And also one of my favorites was conducting an orchestra down in Sao Paulo, Brazil, which was a kind of Professional Training Orchestra. And the musicians there were just so wonderful to work with, but also conducted in Kyiv, which is a hot topic now, of course. And I'm trying to think
there's so many highlights, it's hard to say. Definitely the most recent was my Chicago Symphony debut.

Shelby Dean 2:20
And when did you move to Peoria? And did you move here to become the music director?

George Stelluto 2:25
I became the music director 12 years ago. But I didn't move to Peoria until two years ago, two and a half years ago, because I was also teaching at the Juilliard School in New York City at the same time, so I was commuting back and forth. And then aboutlike I said, I think two January's ago. I moved to Peoria and I live down on Water Street.

Shelby Dean 3:00
And what drew you to the Curia Symphony Orchestra?

George Stelluto 3:05
Well, they had a board president, James McGee, who called the Juilliard School, the president of the Juilliard School, and asked him if he had anybody that he could recommend. And the President recommended me. Man, I was out of Ravinia that summer, and I came down and did the interview. And so that's how it all got started. But what drew me to it was that, you know, it was an orchestra that had a good board and a foundation board, and they had some good people behind it. And so it just seemed like a good solid organization to do some good work with.

Shelby Dean 3:52
And have you gotten a chance to get to know the Peoria community very well? And if so, how have they made an impression?

George Stelluto 4:01
Well, oddly, one of the first people I got to know was Bob Gilmore. Early on, I think I met him at the country club of Peoria through some of that Symphony contacts and he had been a former board president and was very involved and very supportive of the orchestra so I met him and that started a kind of a tradition of every time I was in Peoria coming in from New York, I would make time to have breakfast or lunch with Bob and that was always so much fun. But also very informative. He was a very wise man but then from that I started to meet other members of the community. Sit in flow band were
so many others Pam Perry Johnson. You know, through the board was the initial way I got to meet people and then eventually got to me. Have more of the patrons in the community. And what I really liked about Peoria as a community in that way was
I had a guest conductor come in. And he was staying over at the Embassy Suites across the river. And he called me and said, we were checking in the doorman asked us why we were here. And I told them, we were here today, I was here to guest conduct the Peoria symphony orchestra. And he's like, Oh, I'm a subscriber. So you know, the idea that the doorman at the hotel was a subscriber to the symphony was a very good, very good thing for this community, that level of interest in orchestral music that permeates the entire community. It's not just one little part of it. And you know, since then, we've been running a television show for about 12 years.In collaboration with WTVP. And what I really love about that is that I will, I will go to a diner that's outside of Peoria, or somewhere in rural Illinois, in this region, and I will meet the manager, and the manager will say, Oh, yeah, I watch that TV show that you do. So, you know, that's, that's a sign of a community that has like, has a certain depth to it. That's very encouraging.

Shelby Dean 6:33
Yeah, and one of the reasons that we are researching Bob Gilmore, as I told you a little bit about this before the interview started, was because there was a mural created by him. And there's been an influx with the Portraits of Peoria group. There's been an influx of art and music around Peoria recently, which has been really cool. Yeah, as a student to see. And so you kind of already said this a little bit. But when did you first meet Bob Gilmore? And what was your first impression of him? Well, Bob was

George Stelluto 7:08
I met Bob at the country club, and then I came for my first concert or somewhere in that first fall. And one of our staff members said, you know, Oh, Bob Gilmore wants to have lunch with you. And so he was in his 90s, and was still driving and he drove to pick me up, we went out to the Jubilee cafe, I believe,out near his farm. And then we went to the farm. And it was funny because Bob didn't know me so well. And I didn't know Bob so well, but he was a naturally curious person and a good person. But what was funny was he was certain that I was only going to be here a few years ago when I was going to move on. So I think he was a little bit not suspicious, but a little bit distant about some guy from New York coming in here to conduct the orchestra. But, I know that, you know, several years after that, I started bringing some of our guest artists to have breakfast with him over at Lutheran hillside village. And we were, I think it was Naomi O'Connell, who was one of our guest singers. And he told her, he said, Well, you know, when George first got here, I wouldn't have trusted him as far as I can throw him but he's ours now. And, you know, so he was he's a very positive warm hearted person you could tell I could tell at that first meeting, but he was also very you know, he used his brain and he was going to check things out before he made the full commitment to you as a person but you know, that's part of his wisdom. So that was what that's really how that firstly

Shelby Dean 9:07
And how would you describe your relationship with Gilmore?

George Stelluto 9:11
It was really warm. And I would see him like a rotary occasionally. You know, he would drive overnight sometimes when I was speaking or when I was a guest I would see him
and then I know that his wife liked Manhattan's so I was living in Lexington at the time and one of the distilleries there made a premix Manhattan and so I would, I brought him a bottle of it for her. He was laughing about that. And then like I said, we would get together fairly regularly and go have dinner or lunch or even breakfast and one time I even interviewed him for something called StoryCorps which is run through the National Archives. And he told me about his life. And he also gave me a lot of advice about leading and a lot of support as, you know, knowing that the job was not easy. And but he also shared, you know, things in his life that was so fascinating about his gifts in during World War Two, his time during that as a bomber Navigator, and then starting out here in Peoria, and then trying to find a job during the Depression. And then coming back to Peoria after the Second World War. But he was such a sunny guy, he was very happy and very, I mean, he had a great smile. But he was a good thinker. And, you know, really smart. And then he also had lots of wisdom that came from leading its own life. So he asked me once he said,how, you know, is your board being difficult? And I said, well, not really, sometimes they are. And he said, Well, if you think your board is difficult, try telling your board that you're losing a million dollars a day, but you still know what you're doing. And he was referring to bringing Caterpillar through its first downturn and turning it around. So you know, he was also not a quitter, which,
so I just learned so much from him. I actually wrote a few poems that mentioned him actually, I can send you those if you want. I wrote one for his 100th birthday. And I wrote one that refers to him, because he told me the story once about how when he was working with Caterpillar on the shop floor, he would work the night shift. And he said, I would get up in the morning and go eat breakfast. And I had a canoe when I would canoe out to this island in the middle of the river over here. And he goes, and it would just lay down on the beach and take a nap. And you know, that image of this kind of
a positive person just laying there in the sunshine, just enjoying life struck me. And so I mentioned that in a poem that I wrote that talks about rivers, but you know, he's,
he's not somebody that that life was always easy for either. So the interesting thing about that is that somehow those things informed him. Maybe deepened him. Certainly gave him a lot of wisdom. But they didn't turn, turn him they didn't. He didn't become a better person. He didn't become a person who was you know, whose outlook on life darkened, and that I had a lot of respect for.

Shelby Dean 12:59
Do you have a favorite or fondest memory with Gilmore?

George Stelluto 13:11
Oh, probably sitting still going to visit him and his Caboose, which was his little weekend getaway and then standing on the little porch of the caboose. In the back afterward, we took a picture and I remember there were geese on top of the caboose. And we were laughing about that. And that's probably one of my fondest memories. But I always loved that when I would bring over a guest artist we would have breakfast with them. Like I said, I mentioned Naomi O'Connell came over with us since she was a
fiery redhead, Irish. And that's a soprano with a thick accent and very charming. And it was just fun to have breakfast with him and her and see how he had this big smile on his face. So that's probably another great memory.

Shelby Dean 14:09
And I know you were telling us a little bit before the interviewer got started about his Caboose. Would you mind telling us that story again?

George Stelluto 14:16
Yes. Okay, so Bob had purchased a farm out near the wildlife prairie Park, I believe. And he refurbished the farm, got it back into working order and renovated the buildings on it and everything. And then he put a dam up a stream or a creek there and created a pond, a large pond and stocked it with fish. And then he, I believe he was on the board for the Santa Fe Railroad. And then he bought a caboose from them and he had put it on that property And then after he did all that, he just donated it all to the children's home here in Peoria. And he told him that the only thing I want to keep is the caboose. And so I want that, I want to have access to that all the time that he would go out there on the weekends. And that was his retreat, and he would stay there. And I'm a big train lover. So for me, that was the coolest thing to see. But he would stay there and he would, you know, bring food and spend the weekend and fish on the pond, or lake or whatever you want to call it, and then go back home or go back to using hillside village. And so I know he loved that Caboose. And I know that it was special to him. And it was special for me to be able to share that with him for a brief couple of hours.

Shelby Dean 15:53
So if you had to describe Gilmore to someone who had never met him or didn't know who he was, what would you say?

George Stelluto 16:05
How would I describe Bob Gilmore? a person who grew up in Peoria pulled himself up by his own bootstraps, you know, worked hard, made things work, saw how things could be better.And just continued in that way. And I think that that can do attitude that he had and his kind of positive, Sunny personality, all helped move him forward at Caterpillar. And I know that, you know, just his, his intelligence and, and his big heart probably was very attractive to the people that were going to promote him up, so to speak through the ranks and Caterpillar but the fact that he started on the shop floor that he grew up in Peoria, that he always remained faithful and proud of Peoria.
You know, that's a rare thing for anybody in any place. They just kind of move until where their opportunities are, but he really was here. He really believed in the place. And as evidenced by his foundation, which is only to support things and Peoria, which I think is fantastic. So, you know, he, I would describe him as somebody who's seen a lot, done a lot, fought a lot, and loved a lot.

Shelby Dean 17:50
And I know you just recently moved to Peoria, but you've been, I would say a member of the community for, like you said, 12 years. As music director, you've been coming to Peoria frequently for quite a few years now. What do you think Gilmore's impact on Peoria was? And was that impact evident?

George Stelluto 18:15
Well the thing is about Bob is that it's not a WAS question it's an IS question. Because when he was alive, of course, he was a great influencer of things that were going on here. And he donated a lot of money to many different organizations, including the Peoria symphony. And in fact, my position with the Peoria Symphony As music director is the Bob Gilmore or Caterpillar Endowed Chair. Because he put up the money from that endowment for the music director position. But also, you know what, now with his foundation, the impact is going to be I don't. I don't see where it can end because he was so smart in the way that he set it up. That the benefit up to Peoria will just continue for decades and decades. Because the way he set up his foundation and the areas that he set up for it to be benefited was just so smart. And the people that are involved in that foundation are so smart and very dedicated to ensuring his vision that I just don't see an end to his influence on Peoria. So while he was alive, he certainly was a force to be reckoned with. And while he and after he died his foundation, his influence is going
to be felt for probably forever.

Shelby Dean 20:04
And kind of going off of that, why do you think music and the arts is important to this community?

George Stelluto 20:14
Well, you have an orchestra, we're coming up on our 125th season. That's a long time to have an orchestra. And at 125, it's probably the somewhere I think, 12 to 14 oldest orchestra in the country music in general, it's, it's being shown that all the latest brain research is showing that, you know, the appreciation of music participation in music, listening to music, is not only good for your brain development, but it's good for your brain maintenance at any age, and that these things are incredibly important. Now, this has also been shown in the arts, generally, I did a presentation to ollie at Bradley,
several years ago on the economic impact of the arts. And one of the ways, one of the aspects of that lecture was to talk about how the workforce is impacted by the arts, and because of this kind of ability to rewire your brain in a good way in the arts, that the workforce that grows up here could really benefit from this. So it's not really Oh, it's just entertainment, it's actually really important for your health, for your quality of life, or your well being. And, you know, and I'm talking about art, music now, I mean, there's, there's popular music, and that's not bad. But we have to be careful in our distinctions about that, because almost any industry is geared toward making money. And so they tend to lower lowest common denominator, what they put out so that people will just buy it. But, you know, in the arts and ballet and dance, and theater, and music and everything. I'm not saying I'm not talking about stuffy situations, here, I'm talking about just generally down to earth, appreciation and enjoyment of the arts, by anybody. Just by doing that, as a student, your likelihood of going to college increases your likelihood of so many other detrimental things that you could choose in life go down. And these compound every year. So I think there was something about dance students. There was a study of dance students, and it was showing that just being involved in that increased your likelihood of successfully graduating from high school, successfully graduating from college being successful. And all that, it doesn't mean that you're a great dancer, and you're gonna suddenly be in the New York City Ballet, it's not that's not the point. The point is that all of those things, wire your brain towards success and toward a sophistication that if we didn't have it, that would be very dangerous for society. And I believe now because of all the brain research that's coming out about this stuff. That it's imperative that communities have these things, and it's really going to be a choice for, say, school systems of you know, are we going to get rid of the arts? It's going to be a choice of okay, do we want to disadvantage our students or do we want to give them the advantages of the arts. So this is not a choice now of just frivolity or something extra that we can put in the curriculum. This is something that's vital to the development of mines, and vital to the maintenance of mines when they get older.

Shelby Dean 24:23
Did Bob Gilmore seem very passionate about the arts?

He did. He was, well, he was so passionate about it that he was involved with it intensely for a long time, right while he was living. He was a former board member of the BRS Symphony Orchestra, I believe the Foundation Board member I think it might have been I think he was the president of the of the Peoria Symphony Orchestra board for at one point, but you know that the being involved both actively and behind the scenes.I think he saw it not only as something he enjoyed but as something that was important for the community.

Shelby Dean 24:59
And what role did Gilmore play in spreading the importance of Fine Arts? Kind of along the same lines

George Stelluto 25:11
Oh, well, you know, the thing about Bob was he didn't want to have buildings named after him. And he didn't want to have plaques up everywhere. But what he did, but I can tell you, you know, if you go down to the riverfront Museum, he was a big supporter of that. But there's a plaque somewhere small one, that they finally got him to agree to have up. But he, you know, he wasn't interested in splashing his name everywhere. He just wanted these things to be there. So certainly, what the symphony, the support he's got from a symphony, we're going to be dedicating our 125th season to him next year, and there's probably not a leading arts organization in the city that didn't receive support from him, didn't receive either meaningful financial support or involvement and moral support and creating contacts. You know, he's,I think when he died, I said, you know, we lost an angel.Or no, we lost a patron, but we gained an angel and that was Bob Gilmore in Peoria.

Shelby Dean 26:39
Yeah, we interviewed his daughter and her husband, and he said something that made me laugh. He said that when he passed away that we lost a good person, but God gained another CEO which made me laugh. So do you know approximately how much he gave to the Peoria Symphony Orchestra over the years?

George Stelluto 27:00
Oh, I couldn't even guess. But you know, his continued support of the orchestra through and through the Gilmore Foundation is, just adds to that every year. They have been very generous with us, especially helping us with our upcoming 125th season. But then,
the continuous support that they give us, we were very fortunate. So you know, to give you a number, I would give you a number and then probably two months later, I'd be inaccurate. Support just continues.

Shelby Dean 27:36
So the foundation is continuing to support the furious Symphony Orchestra today. Okay.
So when you and Gilmore obviously you, you said that you got lunch and food together a lot? What did your conversations typically look like?

George Stelluto 27:52
Oh, well, you know, pretty much anything we would talk a lot about, kind of current events is always of course asking me about the symphony if there wasn't another guest with me, you know, we would go into current events and politics and economic upturns and downturns. And you know, I think he was not happy when caterpillars headquarters moved up to Deerfield. And that stems from his just his general support of the community here. So, you know, it would range across a lot of different topics. But always there were always lots of jokes, and laughing involved as far as just enjoying each other's company.

Shelby Dean 28:41
And did Gilmore share any stories with you that really have stuck with you or really struck you at the time?

George Stelluto 28:55
Yeah, you know. He was a bomber navigator in World War Two. And we talked a lot about that one day in his living room, and what astounded me was he told me that he'd flown 30 missions over Europe. Now, I think that's the standard number and then you rotate it out. But you know, to survive 30 missions and to have all of that encounter all that he said, You know, when you first went the first couple of missions you went out and these anti aircraft they call it flak. What exploded around the plane, you didn't think much about it because you didn't really experience he said, so what would happen over those. With each mission you got more and more aware of what the dangers were. And so to imagine Having him, you know, going through that and to imagine him Having to deal with that really struck me. He would deny it, but he was really somebody with lots of courage to be able to do that and to be able to survive that. How fortunate for Peoria that he did survive that. He didn’t go off to some other place. So that was one of the stories he shared with me that I remember that I would never have forgotten. I think that was the one that stuck with me the most in my mind.

Shelby Dean 30:55
And so how long were you and Gilmore friends?

George Stelluto
Oh up until he died from the time I moved here when we first met. Not always towards the end did we get together but I would send him a card or a letter, tell him I was thinking of him.

Shelby Dean 31:18
When you heard of his passing how did you feel?

George Stelluto 31:22
Well I was sad, but I was also, I mean he was 100. And to think about the way he lived his life I think was so admirable and so inspiring that by the time he passed away I wasn’t surprised because I knew he wasn’t well but at the same time I was thinking man, this is somebody who didn’t waste a moment of his life in terms of how to be generous, how to be giving, and caring about people, about a corporation, about a community. He certainly had a sense of peace about him when he passed away.

Shelby Dean 32:43
And did Gilmore inspire you or impact you in any way?

George Stelluto 32:47
Yeah you know he said something to me once about leadership which I will always remember. I had done leadership research myself. And we had talked about that. And he was talking to me about leading the Peoria Symphony and he said you have to lead, you have to own your decisions, and you have to own your successes and you have to own your mistakes cause you’re gonna make mistakes, but you have to own them and move on. That's kind of confident, unapologetic leadership without being arrogant was apparent in his being. And so when he gave me that advice about owning your mistakes and acknowledge your successes was just good solid down to earth advice about leading.

Shelby Dean 33:47
Getting to our last question, is there anything about Gilmore that you think we should know that we didn’t ask?

George Stelluto 34:28
I think that the thing that people should know about Bob Gilmore, because it's easy to remember someone that's done a lot of good and done a lot of things for the community and his shared wealth that they made for themselves generously with the community and its people, and very wisely. It's easy to suddenly want to think of that person beyond human qualifications, but what they should know is that, that should be the baseline for being a human being. And that that’s something to live up to, not because its so, unfortunately, unusual. But if we could all take Bob’s outlook on things, I think it would be less unusual and that more of us would be that way. I think he’s inspired a lot of good by doing good but he also didn’t want, necessarily, a lot of celebration of him but rather celebration of the good that could be done, and I think that's what people should know about him. At least that's the impression I got from him. I never felt nervous, I never felt like, when we were getting together, oh he’s such a great man, what am I going to talk about. I just felt like, okay, two friends getting together. Two people that could talk about things and share their visions. Like I said talk about the good that could be done rather than the good that has been done. I think that's what people need to know and remember about him because they should still, people who have the means, have the ability, have the resources to do good should be inspired by that model and not just see the credit that's given but just see the good that's being done.

Shelby Dean

George Stelluto

WTPA Building