Leon Lazarov as a conductor of The State Planning Commitee choir

This is the State Planning Committee choir, I am the conductor. The accordionist Evstati Kuzmanov is the first from left. He started as the accordionist of a dancing troupe. Then I invited him and made him a choir accordionist. Later he started working with quartets, trios and finally with a famous pop singer, thus he appeared before the public as a choir accompanist. The picture was taken in Sofia in the 1950s. Since 1945 I have also been a conductor of the 'Liliana Dimitrova' amateur choir. Upon the end of the war, many amateur choirs were created, some of them at the 'chitalishta'. It was a choir consisting of very experienced and talented singers. We did a very precise selection in order to make it a really representative choir. We traveled around Bulgaria with it. I had two or three assistants to replace me whenever I was absent. In 1947 the choir participated in the World Festival in Prague. After a careful selection we included another ten people from different choirs all over Bulgaria along with ours, which had 60-70 members. The first prize wasn't awarded but the second one was awarded to us. This was a great recognition and honor for us! It stimulated the careers of many of the choir singers. The composer Jules Levi made his name in that choir.