Bernard Zaslav (April 7, 1926 – December 28, 2016[1]) was an American viola soloist and chamber musician with an extensive recording and performance career.
[2][3] Zaslav was born in Brooklyn, New York, and studied at the Juilliard School in 1946 as a violin student[4] of Sascha Jacobsen and Mischa Mischakoff.
[5] In these ensembles he shared in commissioning, premiering, and recording new works by Elliott Carter, Milton Babbitt, Gunther Schuller, Ralph Shapey, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Roger Sessions, Ursula Mamlok, Henry Weinberg, Billy Jim Layton, Charles Wuorinen, Ben Johnston, Seymour Shifrin, Andrew Imbrie, Samuel Adler, John Downey, Karel Husa, Marc Neikrug, and William Bolcom.
[13] Zaslav performed on a viola made by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini in 1781 in Turin, Italy, and is described as the "ex-Villa".
Bernard Zaslav's memoir, The Viola in My Life: An Alto Rhapsody, was published in 2011 by Science and Behavior Books.