Mona Golabek is an American concert pianist and author.
Golabek was born in Los Angeles, the daughter of Michel Golabek, winner of the Croix de Guerre, and Lisa Jura, a concert pianist. Her father was from Poland and had been part of the Polish resistance movement in World War II before coming the United States. Her mother was born in Austria and was one of the 10,000 children brought to England before World War II as part of the Kindertransport, a mission to rescue children threatened by the Nazis. Although her mother was rescued, her maternal grandparents died in the Auschwitz concentration camp, as did her paternal grandparents. Golabek wrote a book entitled The Children of Willesden Lane that chronicles her mother's experience with the Kindertransport which was published in 2002.[1][2][3]
Golabek was taught piano largely from her mother, who had in turn learned to play from her own mother (Mona's grandmother) Malka Jura, who was also a concert pianist.[1] She won the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in 1972 which led to her New York City recital debut at Carnegie Hall. Afterwords she continued to study piano privately in Rome and London before winning the Avery Fisher Prize in 1979 and the People's Award of the International Frederick Chopin Piano Competition.[4] She has since appeared in concert with major orchestras and conductors around the world and in recitals at the Hollywood Bowl, the Kennedy Center, and the Royal Festival Hall. A number of her recording have earned Grammy Award nominations and she was the subject of the PBS documentaries More Than the Music, which won the grand prize in the 1985 WorldFest-Houston International Film Festival, and Concerto for Mona.
In 1992 Golabek and her sister Renee Golabek-Kaye, also a pianist, organized a performance and recording of Camille Saint-Saëns's The Carnival of the Animals. The performance included the reading of Ogden Nash's well known verses on animals with Saint-Saëns's music played underneath. The verses were read by 14 well known actors, including Ted Danson, Audrey Hepburn, James Earl Jones, Walter Matthau, William Shatner, Jaclyn Smith, Lily Tomlin, Betty White, Joan Rivers, Charlton Heston, and Dudley Moore. Proceeds from the recording were given to charities that help animals, such as the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.[5]
Since 1998, Golabek has run her own classical music radio program The Romantic Hours which airs on roughly 50 public and commercial stations using XM Satellite Radio. The program is sponsored by Steinway & Sons, who Golabek has had a long association with as a spokesperson.[1]