Cellist and B.C.-boy Michael Unterman enjoys a varied performing career on both modern and baroque cellos. He proudly joined the ranks of Tafelmusik in 2023 and also serves a co-principal cellist of Boston Baroque and A Far Cry. Of late he has performed and recorded with ensembles including the Cramer Quartet, Ensemble Caprice, The Knights, and Ruckus, and performed at Baroque Music Montana, the Carmel Bach Festival, and Staunton Music Festival. He has also enjoyed past stints as a member of Portland Baroque Orchestra and as the Artistic Director of Five Boroughs Music Festival. He pursued musical studies at the New England Conservatory and The Juilliard School with Laurence Lesser, Natasha Brofsky, and Phoebe Carrai, and was a Fulbright Scholar to Barcelona, Spain, where he studied with Lluis Claret and Quartetto Casals.
Behind-the-scenes work has been an important part of Michael’s musical life, leading him roles in fundraising, artistic planning, and curation, his work being praised as “just the kind of imaginative artistic agenda that more groups should be prodded to try” in The Boston Globe and “gorgeous and remarkably unified” in the Washington Post. His early mentors and musical role models include his long-time cello teacher Judy Fraser, his quartet coach Heilwig von Koenigslow, the former directors of the Banff Centre Tom and Isobel Rolston, and his mother and pianist-collaborator Kathy Bjorseth, and all of whom instilled an enduring drive to bring about nurturing spaces for music and musicians.