Peter Salaff was a founding member of the Cleveland Quartet, with whom he has received seven GRAMMY Award nominations, a GRAMMY award, and "Best of the Year" awards from Time and Stereo Review for recordings of more than 50 chamber works on major labels.

He has performed numerous concerts, including many tours of the former Soviet Union, South America, Australia, New Zealand, Turkey and Israel, in addition to tours across the U.S. and Canada. Salaff has coached chamber music and given master classes in many conservatories and universities in the U.S., as well as in Germany, Japan, Israel and New Zealand. He has taught as a performing faculty member at the University of Concepcion, Chile; the State University of New York at Buffalo; the Eastman School of Music; and, during summers at Interlochen, Michigan; the Kneisel Hall Music Festival; Chamber Music in the Mountains at Echo Glen; the Aspen Music Festival; the Norfolk Festival; the Killington Music Festival; PhoenixPhest; and the Schleswig Holstein Music Festival in Germany.

Salaff has been a judge at many chamber music competitions, including the London International String Quartet Competition, the Fischoff Competition, the Yellow Springs Competition and, in 2007, he served as a judge at the Coleman Competition. Salaff received the Yale School of Music Alumni Association's Certificate of Merit in 1979. He was reappointed to the faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Music in 1995, where he was the former Director of String Chamber Music.