Episode 80: George Edward Stelluto
American conductor George Edward Stelluto, Music Director for the Peoria Symphony Orchestra, is the Resident Conductor at the Juilliard School, the Assistant Conductor of the Ravinia Festival with the Chicago Symphony and an advisor to Sinfonia por La Vida in Ecuador - a new orchestra based on Venezuela's Il Sistema program. A versatile conductor comfortable in many styles and genres, George Stelluto gives frequent performances at Lincoln Center with the Juilliard Orchestra and has collaborated with the Dance, Vocal, Pre-College, and Jazz divisions at Juilliard in projects ranging from Spring Dances@Juilliard to the Juilliard Opera Center's "Trilogy" production of operas by Mussorgsky, Krenek, and Fleischman.
He made his Avery Fisher Hall debut with the Juilliard Orchestra in May 2008 in an all-symphonic program of Bernstein's Candide Overture, Beethoven's Symphony No. 4, and Brahms' Symphony No. 2. His international debut was at the Kiev International Music Festival in 2000 where he gave the Ukrainian premiere of Samuel Barber's Second Essay for Orchestra. Subsequent acclaimed premieres there include William Schuman's Symphony #5, Barber's First Essay, and Ewazen's Chamber Symphony.
Maestro Stelluto's performances, interviews, and recordings have been broadcast on radio and television throughout the United States and Europe. He has collaborated with solo artists such as Sarah Chang, Hilary Hahn, Edgar Meyer, and Samuel Ramey. His numerous contemporary premieres include works by Philippe Bodin, Virko Baley, Huang Ruo, Paul Desenne, and Theodore Antoniou. The Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago Symphony and the Juilliard Orchestra have performed his orchestral reduction of Schreker's overture to the opera Die Gezeichneten and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra will perform it this season.
George Stelluto is Juilliard's first Artist Diploma recipient in conducting, the first Resident Conductor at the Juilliard School, and the first ever Assistant Conductor at the Ravinia Festival. He also holds two Master's Degrees (Violin & Conducting) from the Yale School of Music, and a Bachelor's Degree in Violin from West Virginia University, summa cum laude. Among his numerous awards are the State of Nevada Regents Creativity Award and The Bruno Walter Memorial Fellowship at Juilliard. He has participated in many summer festivals both as a conductor and chamber musician, including Ravinia, Aspen, Peter Britt, Focus!, The Quartet Program, Kiev International, Long Beach, and Ukrainian Summer.
