Dragan Prokopiev Vasilev (Bulgarian: Драган Прокопиев Василев), better known as Dragan Prokopiev, is a Bulgarian choir conductor and music pedagogue.
[1] Prokopiev was born on 18 July 1904 in Kyustendil, Bulgaria to a teacher's family.
After finishing secondary school, in 1923, he moved to Leipzig to study the violin with H. Wassermann, followed by specializations in Paris with Lucien Capet in 1924 and 1926, in Písek with the violin pedagogue Otakar Ševčík in 1925 and 1927, as well as in Berlin at the Stern'sches Konservatorium with Carl Flesch from 1928 to 1930.
[1] During the Second World War, Prokopiev had the idea of creating the vocal choir of the Bulgarian army.
Later, Prokopiev started attracting instrumentalists, too, as well as some of the finest Bulgarian opera singers of the time, such as Dimitar Uzunov and Nikola Nikolov, as well as the composer Asen Karastoyanov, who composed approximately 50 songs especially for the choir.