An accomplished musician, Marlise Botelho Klein grew up in a home where music was a central activity. Her mother taught piano for many years at the Adventist college in Brazil and is well-known throughout that country as the writer of its best-selling beginning piano series.

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

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 sixties. The mother is a third generation Adventist whose grandfather was the first non-United States SDA missionary to go to Africa.

She met Alex Klein at age fifteen while both were attending music festivals in Brazil. The friendship became serious when Alex moved to Sao Paulo, where she lived, to study it the University. She 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. Both Marlise, and Alex received scholarships from the Brazilian government for graduate study. She completed a master's degree in 1991.

When she and her husband 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 is an active musician now residing in the Chicago area.

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