Author, concert pianist and story teller: Pianist of Willesden Lane
Program Titles
- A pognant tale of tragedy and outrage… on young woman’s courage.
- The Children of Willesden Lane, Beyond the Kindertransport: A Memoir of Muisc, Love, and Survival
- Inspiring tribute to the power of a mother’s love
- Music, history and human prejudice
Mona Golabeck is an accomplished pianist who has won many honors and prizes, 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, Houston Film Festival, and Concerto for Mona, featuring 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.
Performed with many of the world’s finest symphonies:
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Tokyo Philharmonic
and conductors including
Zubin Mehta,
Andre Previn,
Michael Tilson Thomas.
The Children of Willesden Lane — at times heartbreaking but, ultimately, inspirational. It tells the true story of Lisa Jura, who in 1938 was a promising 14-year-old pianist living happily in Vienna with her close-knit Jewish family and dreaming of following the musical footsteps of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Strauss.
But when the Nazis started closing in, her parents were able to secure one, and only one, berth on the Kindertransport,
the so-called “children’s train” out of Austria.
Forced to choose, Lisa’s mother and father made the difficult decision to send Lisa, their middle daughter, to safety.
A moving coming-of-age story of the friendships Lisa made, her attempts to continue her musical training, her worries about the family she left behind, and her efforts to help her younger sister, in particular, to escape from Austria and join her in England.
She also opens a window on the joys and hardships of everyday life in London during World War II.
No one will mistake Lisa Jura — a frightened, lonely, determined young woman — for a fictional character.
Holocaust story set outside of Nazi-occupied territory, it brings home the way the Nazi horrors affected one teenage girl.
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.
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.
Books by Mona Golabeck
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