Katie Tertell

Award-winning American cellist Katie Tertell is a performer and artistic curator, innovating how classical music is digested in modern times. Katie is the Artistic Director and Founder of the Appalachian Chamber Music Festival.. She is a core member of Musici Ireland , member of critically-acclaimed band Howay the Lasses, artistic lead and co-founder of the “Lost in Plain Sight” research project, and founding member of her duo, Cello Power. Formerly a member of the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, she enjoys a rich and varied experience as an artist in Europe, America and globally.   

Alongside work with internationally-recognized ensembles, recording projects and appearances as a soloist, Katie focuses her attention on projects that aim to connect people through meaningful experiences in music, working cross-disciplinarily and in various sectors.  Since 2019, she has commissioned 13 chamber music works by composers such as Mark Boden, Karim Al-Zand and Karen Walwyn, and is a champion of performing works by living composers. Katie’s artistic leaderships on "The Popper Project "and "Lost in Plain Sight " (which has premiered rare and unpublished works by Gaspar Cassadó) has been reported on in publications like “The Strad” and NPR’s Morning Edition. Additional projects of note include participation in development of the multi-disciplinary work Chronically Hopeful with Musici Ireland, premiered in 2025, which collaborates with artists with unseen disabilities.

Katie also performs and records regularly with celebrated European symphony and chamber orchestras including in various leadership and principal cello roles at major venues and festivals like the Barbican and Southbank Centre in London, BBC Proms and the National Concert Hall of Ireland.  She can be heard regularly on BBC Radio 3 and RTÈ Lyric FM in recorded and live performances of both chamber and orchestral works. Katie teaches cello at Durham University.  

Katie grew up outside of Washington D.C. in McLean, Virginia. She holds degrees with honors in performance from Indiana University, Cleveland Institute of Music and the Royal Northern College of Music, as well as a Second Masters degree in Suzuki Pedagogy from the Sato Center at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Her teachers and mentors include among many Janos Starker, Emilio Colón, Joely Koos, Peter Dixon and Ralph Kirschbaum. She plays on an 1888 Colin-Mezin cello.