Elliott Golub Receives Top Honor from Roosevelt University

Elliott Golub, a 1961 graduate of Roosevelt University, received the University’s Otto Wirth Award for Lifetime Achievement on May 15.  The award recognizes a Roosevelt alumnus who exemplifies the Roosevelt University ideal of excellence through a significant record of lifetime achievement.

A resident of Winnetka, Golub is one of Chicago’s leading violinists.  He was concertmaster of the Music of the Baroque Orchestra for 35 years and was a soloist with the ensemble in a wide variety of repertoire.  He is now concertmaster emeritus of Music of the Baroque.

Golub graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Music in 1956 with a Bachelor of Music and the Chicago Musical College of Roosevelt University with a Masters of Music in 1961.

Previous recipients of the Otto Wirth Award include Donald Jacobs, former dean of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, pianist Ramsey Lewis, and television anchor Robert Jordan.

The award was presented by James Gandre, provost and executive vice president of Roosevelt.  At the presentation ceremony, Golub was featured as violin soloist in a performance of Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat major.  He was joined by violist Li-Kuo Chang and conductor Joel Smirnoff.

Formerly, Golub was concertmaster of the Robert Shaw Chorale, the Seventh Army Orchestra, and was also concertmaster and violin soloist with the Contemporary Chamber Players at the University of Chicago, with whom he participated in many world premiere concerts and recordings. He performed in the nation’s capital at the National Gallery, at the Library of Congress, at the Kennedy Center and at the White House. As a soloist, he traveled several times to Chins where he performed among other works, the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra’s first complete performance of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.

For the past 16 years, he has taken his group, Trio Chicago & Friends, on ambassadorial trips to Cuba, Egypt, Ethiopia, Mali, Zambia, Uganda, Djibouti, Mongolia, Thailand, Vietnam, China, Cambodia, Laos, Jordan, Belize, Russia, Paraguay, Venezuela, Barbados, Turkey, Botswana, Australia and Burma. He recently returned from his 4th trip to Thailand and his 2nd trip to Burma. In July 2011, Trio Chicago & Friends will be going to Papua New Guinea. The international travels of Trio Chicago & Friends exposes audiences to the “classical” American music of composers such as Gershwin, Bernstein, Porter, Berlin and Ellington.

In 2006 Golub was presented with the William Hall Sherwood Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Arts. In 2007 he received an award by the Bureau of African Affairs for “sustained and exceptional contributions to cultural diplomacy in Africa” and in 2008 he was given an award from the Department of State – Bureau of East Asia and Pacific Affairs “…for excellence in promoting cultural diplomacy and mutual understanding.” In 2010 he received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Cleveland Institute of Music.

Golub is on the Board of Directors of the Music Institute of Chicago and serves on the Strategic Planning Task Force of the Cleveland Institute of Music. He is also a Governing Member of the Art Institute of Chicago.