Marianella Machado was born in Caracas, Venezuela. Between 1972 and1980, she studied music at the conservatories in her home city. In 1981, she went to the United States to study music composition at Indiana University in Bloomington. There she obtained the Bachelor of Music (1984) and the Master of Music (1986) degrees in composition.

During 1986-88, she lived in Caracas where she taught various music courses and received several commissions to compose music for orchestra, modern dance, film, and chamber ensembles as well. Besides her activities as music teacher and composer, in 1987-88, she worked as a research assistant and coordinator of the arts and humanities section at Centro Latinoamericano “Rómulo Gallegos”. Also, she was Dr. Francisco Kurt Lange’s research assistant for the Musical Bibliography of Venezuela at Biblioteca Nacional.

Between 1989 and 1993, she worked at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music as a teaching assistant and tutor in music theory and composition for undergraduate and graduate students. She received her Doctor of Musical Arts Diploma from College-Conservatory of Music in 1993.

Along with her music activities, she has been working intensively since 1994 in the field of Spanish as second language and Hispanic literature. In fact, the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures of the University of Cincinnati awarded her a scholarship and an assistantship for graduate studies in Latin American literature. There she obtained two degrees, Master of Arts (1996), and Ph. D. in Hispanic Literature (1998). Moreover, her Ph. D. dissertation consists of a study of the relationship between poetry and music form the perspective of music theory.

From 1998 to 2003, she was a professor on the faculty of the School of Education at the Universidad Católica “Andrés Bello” in Caracas. There she taught a course on musical and artistic expression applied to preschool teachers. Her task consisted of teaching the use of music, art, language, and literature techniques as tools for developing children’s artistic creativity and communication skills.

Since August 2003, she has been living in the United Estates and working as an Assistant Professor of Spanish in the Department of Foreign Languages and Humanities at Eastern Kentucky University.

Marianella Machado’s artistic output includes musical works (for solo instruments, voice, chorus, chamber ensemble, full orchestra, film, and contemporary dance), as well as literary works (poetry and theater).