Early Music students Agata Sorotokin (harpsichord) and Antonio Pellegrino (Baroque violin) have won first prize in the 2025 Emerging Artist Competition of Early Music Vancouver. As the ‘A.S.A.P. Duo’, they presented a program centered around rare Neapolitan manuscripts, bringing partially unfinished works to life through their own reconstructions.
The Emerging Artist Competition is organized annually by Early Music Vancouver and is open to young musicians under the age of 30. This year’s theme, ‘The Future of Early Music’, invited participants to present an artistic project that reflects their vision for the future of early music—through performance, research, or education.
Agata Sorotokin and Antonio Pellegrino form the A.S.A.P. Duo and based their project on two rarely performed Neapolitan manuscripts, featuring music by, among others, Rocco and Gaetano Greco. Their program combines fully written compositions with so-called partimenti: sketch-like pieces that they, as performers, further developed and completed themselves.
“It is a great honour to receive support for a project that carries a deep meaning for us as early musicians. The concert program we’ve created intertwines fully written works from Naples at the turn of the eighteenth century with partially sketched pieces, which we have completed using the clues left by the Neapolitan maestri. We would like to thank EMV’s Emerging Artist Competition team for giving us the opportunity to bring this musical canvas to life — to blur the lines between composer and performer, reuniting these roles within our early music concert life,” the duo responded.
Congratulations, Agata and Antonio!
