Ms. Golabek is the founder and president of the non-profit organization Hold On To Your Music. She is an author, recording artist, radio host and internationally acclaimed concert pianist. Ms. Golabek was taught by her mother, Lisa Jura, who, along with Lisa’s mother Malka, is the subject of Ms. Golabek’s book,The Children Of Willesden Lane. The work of Ms. Golabek and her sister, the late concert pianist Renee Golabek-Kaye, has been inspired by the words their grandmother uttered to her daughter at the Vienna train station as Lisa boarded the Kindertransport for safety in London at the outset of World War II. “Hold on to your music,” Malka told her, “It will be your best friend.”
A Grammy nominee, Ms. Golabek has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Avery Fisher Prize and the People's Award of the International Chopin Competition. She has been the subject of several PBS television documentaries, including More Than the Music, which won the grand prize in the 1985 Houston Film Festival, and Concerto for Mona, featuring Ms. Golabek and conductor Zubin Mehta. She has appeared in concert at the Hollywood Bowl, the Kennedy Center, Royal Festival Hall and with major orchestras and conductors worldwide.
Ms. Golabek is the creator and voice of The Romantic Hours radio program, which combines classical music with readings of poetry, letters, and stories and has been syndicated on the WFMT Radio Network and XM Satellite Radio.
Ms. Golabek’s recordings include the best-selling Carnival of the Animals featuring the voices of Audrey Hepburn, Ted Danson, Lily Tomlin and others; Ravel’s Mother Goose featuring Meryl Streep; and the Piano Trios of Arensky and Tchaikowsky, recorded in collaboration with Renee Golabek-Kaye and including the Poulenc Double Piano Concerto.
Mona is the proud aunt to her late sister’s four children, who are keeping alive the legacy passed down by their great-grandmother, their grandmother and their mother: Michele, Sarah and Rachel, who are pianists; and their brother Jonathan, a violinist.
Courtesy of the Hold Onto Your Music Foundation.