Mona Golabek

Mona Golabek is an American concert pianist, author, and radio host. She has appeared with many leading orchestras and made numerous recordings. Golabek co-wrote a book entitled The Children of Willesden Lane that chronicles her mother's experience with the Kindertransport which was published in 2002. A play titled The Pianist of Willesden Lane, based on the book, adapted and directed by Hershey Felder, and in which Golabek appeared in a one-woman show, opened at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles in April 2012. The play opened in London at the St James Theatre in January 2016

Concert pianist Mona Golabek is the daughter of Lisa Jura, a concert pianist, and French resistance fighter Michel Golabek. Her mother Lisa was born in Austria, and was one of 10,000 Jewish children brought to England before World War II as part of the Kindertransport, a mission to rescue children threatened by the Nazis. Although Mona's mother was rescued, her maternal grandparents died at Auschwitz. Her father, Michel Golabek, received the Croix de Guerre for his heroism in the French Resistance during WW II.

Golabek was taught piano largely by her mother, who had in turn learned to play from her own mother (Mona's grandmother) Malka Jura. When asked in an interview whether she had had other piano teachers aside from her mother, Mona answered: "I studied with several outstanding pianists: Leon Fleisher, Reginald Stewart, and Joanna Graudan. But my mother was my true teacher and inspiration".

Mona won the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in 1972, which led to her New York City recital debut at Hunter College. Afterward, she continued to study piano privately in Rome and London. In 1980, she won an Avery Fisher Career Grant.

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. She has one Grammy nomination and she was the subject of the PBS documentaries More Than the Music, winner of the Grand Prize in the 1985 WorldFest-Houston International Film Festival. Concerto for Mona by William Kraft was dedicated to her.

...
Wikipedia