The Daily Telegraph
January 30, 1993

Macedonian pianists are thin on the ground in London. But a fair example of the breed is Maya Dokic, who came here five years ago and has since won a following in smart London drawing rooms. Miss Dokic will play some of her own compositions in a concert next month at the Royal College of Music. The evening, which she has co-organised, will raise money for Yugoslavian refugees.

Operating from a small flat in Knightsbridge, where she lives with her grand piano, Miss Dokic has recruited a flash bunch of friends, many with European titles (make of them what you will). Various baronesses and counts are up for the concert, including Archduke Sigsmund Habsburg of Austria and Peter Gabriel, pop singer - about the only humble "Esq" on the concert invitation. It is hoped that the Duke of York, an old friend, may also turn up. "I often used to go to his house, Sunninghill, and end up at the piano," says Miss Dokic. "I'm closer to Sarah than Andrew. They're both coping well with the current situation."

Evening Standard (London)
February 2, 1993

Blessed with looks and talent, pianist Maya Dokic from war-torn Yugoslavia has been working as a model to further her career as a composer-performer in this country.

She makes her crucial London debut in the Britten Theatre at the Royal College of Music next week. The concert on 10 February will not only demonstrate her abilities as a classical pianist and as a composer of her own music with its clearly Slavic overtones, but raise funds for Yugoslav children too.

'A year ago I did not know I could write music,' said 27-year-old Miss Dokic, who emerged from Skopje Conservatoire as best student five years ago, before deciding to try her luck in this country. 'Peter Gabriel helped me and now I find I write very quickly. It just comes out.'

Gabriel will be there in what promises to be a star-studded evening. Ned Sherrin and Tania Bryer, a friend acquired on the catwalk, will be introducing her to an audience that is expected to include Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall, Sting, Simon and Yasmin Le Bon, Joan Collins and Roger Moore.

Their presence is testimony to the fact that Miss Dokic, well-connected in her Macedonian homeland, had little difficulty finding her level here. Her father ran the national railway network, her mother was a director of a tobacco company and a brother is a doctor.

'I am bossy, demanding and ambitious,' she says, laughing, 'but I am very disciplined, something you learn from being brought up under a communist regime.' She omits to mention her effortless charm.

'But when I first arrived in Britain it was not easy to find a way of surviving with music,' she explained, 'so I turned to modelling for Fendi, Jacques Vert and others.'