Dorina is an internationally acclaimed violinist with numerous accolades from her broad performing career. She was born in Bulgaria, educated in the United States and has established London as her permanent residence. Dorina has collaborated with some of the world’s leading artists, conductors and composers of all genres.
Dorina Markoff grew up in a small apartment in Bulgaria after her family’s possessions and properties were confiscated by the newly established Communist regime. Dorina’s maternal grandmother was forced to study abroad; she graduated in Zagreb, Croatia, the first Bulgarian specialist in the education of deaf people. She was the founder and director of the first school for children with hearing difficulties in Bulgaria.
Also a trained educator and child psychologist, Dorina’s mother recognised her daughter’s interest in music at an early age and bought her a small gramophone which became Dorina’s best friend. Dorina was accepted by the Music School in Sofia aged five, one of twenty children from hundreds of candidates. She began her studies with Irina Dragneva and Russi Dragnev, exceptional pedagogues with immense imagination and positivity and spent her final four years at the School in the class of Valentin Tchoparinov, who introduced her to Barbra Streisand, jazz and the versatility of music. Dorina continued her studies at the National Academy of Music and in her second year accepted a tutti first violin job in the Sofia Philharmonic.
Subsequently she gained a place in the Mahler Youth Orchestra under the direction of Claudio Abbado. Her audition resulted in an invitation to join the European Mozart Academy, where she met Mark Kaplan, Pnina Salzman, Aurele Nicolet, Jessy Read, Yuri Zhislin and many other musicians, after which her musical life took a different course.