Dr. Connie Frigo is an accomplished soloist, chamber musician, teacher, speaker, and founder of numerous festivals. She is a sought-after presenter on topics relating to professional development, entrepreneurship, creativity, and women in music, and is a steadfast organizer of interdisciplinary events with a focus on the creative process and engaging new audiences. She has at taught saxophone at the University of Georgia since 2011, and is the inaugural Chair of the North American Saxophone Alliance's Committee on the Status of Women, where her leadership has overseen the launch of a women’s mentoring program.
Highlights of Frigo’s career include six years with the premiere U.S. Navy Band, Washington, D.C., a position she won as a junior in college; seven years touring nationally as the baritone saxophonist with the New Century Saxophone Quartet; and faculty positions at the Universities of Tennessee, Maryland and Ithaca College prior to UGA. She is a Fulbright Scholar to the Netherlands, where she began a lifelong collaboration with Dutch ‘avant pop’ composer JacobTV.
In recent years, Frigo has traveled to Italy, Russia, Brazil and Panama to perform and teach. She has served on the faculties of the American Saxophone Academy at the Eastman School of Music, the Great Plains Saxophone Workshop (OK), and the Dakota Chamber Music Festival (ND). In August 2017, her trio, The Yargo Trio, featuring Angela Jones-Reus (flute) and Liza Stepanova (piano), released their debut album Voices, Reimagined, produced by Mark Records.
Graduates of Frigo's studio earn military band positions, university and public school teaching positions, and graduate assistantships at leading schools of music across the country, in addition to pursuing other career fields as double majors with music. Her students have won concerto, young artist, and chamber music competitions at national levels.
Frigo has been a part of commissioning and premiering the works of many composers including JacobTV, Bang On a Can co-founder David Lang, Ben Johnston, John Fitz Rogers, Joel Love and Peter van Zandt Lane, among others. In 2020, the Yargo Trio will premiere a new work written for them by Lowell Liebermann.
Frigo is a Henri Selmer Paris artist and D’Addario artist. She is a grant recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts, Aaron Copland Fund, Netherlands-America Foundation, and Chamber Music America. Her degrees are from Ithaca College (BM), The University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana (MM), Conservatorium van Amsterdam (Fulbright, post-graduate performer’s diploma) and The University of South Carolina (DMA).