Jascha Brodsky

Jascha Brodsky (June 6, 1907 – March 3, 1997) was a Russian-American violinist and teacher.

Born in Kharkiv, in the Kharkov Governorate of the Russian Empire (in present-day Ukraine), he began his violin studies with his violinist father at the age of six. He later studied at the conservatory in Tbilisi, Georgia, and by 1926, was performing successfully all over the Soviet Union. That same year, he went to Paris to study with Lucien Capet. There he also played for Sergei Prokofiev and performed with pianist Vladimir Horowitz and violinists Nathan Milstein and Mischa Elman.

Soon thereafter, he moved again, to Belgium to study with the legendary Eugène Ysaÿe.

In 1930 he moved to America to study with Efrem Zimbalist at the Curtis Institute of Music. Alongside his classmates Orlando Cole, Max Aronoff, and Benjamin Sharlip, Brodsky formed in 1932 an ensemble which would later be called the Curtis String Quartet and served as the first violinist of the quartet until the group disbanded in 1981 after the death of the quartet's violist, Max Aronoff.