Marlise Gnutzmann Botelho

1965 -

Marlise Botelho, an accomplished violinist and violist, was a professional musician in Seattle and Chicago in the 1990s and early 2000s. She is now working as a medical professional in the Dayton, Ohio, area.

Marlise was born in Westminster, California, and grew up in Brazil, one of three children and the only daughter of Henila and Alice Gnutzmann Botelho. Although the family's roots are in Brazil, she and a brother were born in California when the parents spent ten years there in the 1960s. Their mother is a third generation Adventist whose grandfather was the first non-United States Seventh-day Adventist missionary to go to Africa.

Their father taught Portuguese and English, and their mother gave piano lessons for many years at Instituto Adventista Ensino, the Adventist college in Sao Paulo, Brazil. She was well known throughout that country as the writer of its best-selling beginning piano series. As a consequence, the children grew up in a home where music was a central activity.

Marlise and her two brothers took music lessons from their earliest years, she learning the viola and her brothers the cello and bassoon. All three children now reside in the United States, one brother teaching music theory at Davidson College in North Carolina and the other serving as principal cello for the White House Orchestra in the nation's capital.

She attended and graduated from IAE in 1981. She had met Alex Klein, an oboist, earlier while both were attending music festivals in Brazil. The friendship became serious when Alex moved to Sao Paulo to study at the University.

Marlise came to the United States with Alex in 1984 to begin her college studies in music at the College Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati. After their marriage in 1986, she transferred to the Cleveland Institute of Music, from which she graduated in 1990 with a bachelor's degree. She completed a master's degree in music at CIM in 1991. Both Marlise and Alex received scholarships from the Brazilian government for graduate study.

When the Kleins lived in Seattle from 1991-1995 they joined with members of the Seattle Symphony and music faculty at the University of Washington to establish the Chamber Music Society of Seattle. She served as co-director of a chamber music series at the Seattle Arts Museum and also taught violin at the Pacific Northwest School of Music.

They relocated to the Chicago area in 1995 when Alex became principal oboist with the Chicago symphony. Following a divorce in 2002, Marlise continued as a member of the Orion Chamber Ensemble, resident orchestra at Roosevelt University, performing in chamber ensembles and, as a freelance musician, playing as needed in the Chicago Symphony and the Lyric Opera and other groups.

In 2004, Marlise moved to Dayton, Ohio, to retrain for a new career that would allow her be able to spend more time with her son and daughter, Stephan and Ani. She earned a master's degree in science as a Physician's Assistant at the Kettering College of Medical Arts and then worked in gastroenterology for four years in the Kettering Hospital network and at two other hospitals in the area. She started working this year in internal medicine and as a hospitalist in the Kettering network. She married George Spencer in 2012.

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Sources: Interview with Marlise, 12 July 2012; information provided in 1993 by the Kleins and in 2003 by Marlise.