Dr. Connie Frigo

BOARD MEMBER
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Dr. Connie Frigo is an accomplished soloist, chamber musician, teacher, speaker, and founder of numerous festivals.  She is sought-after presenter on topics relating to professional development, entrepreneurship, creativity, and women in music.  She is a steadfast organizer of interdisciplinary events with a focus on the creative process and engaging new audiences, resulting in meaningful intersections of performers, composers, socially-conscious non-profits, students, concerned and active citizens, and arts leaders. Currently the Associate Professor of Saxophone at the University of Georgia, she is also 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. 
 
Frigo is an active clinician and guest performer at universities domestically and internationally and appears regularly at national and international conferences.  In recent years, she has traveled to Italy, Russia, Brazil, Panama and Croatia 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, and the Dakota Chamber Music Festival.  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.  As a chamber musician, she has received support from the National Endowment of the Arts, the Copland Fund, the Netherland-America Foundation, Meet the Composer, and Chamber Music America.

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. 
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Frigo is a Henri Selmer Paris artist and D’Addario artist. For the North American Saxophone Alliance, she has served as Coordinator of Competitions (2007-2010), program committee member (2012) and program chair (2014) for the biennial conferences. She is a Fulbright Scholar to the Netherlands. Her degrees are from Ithaca College (BM), the University of Illinois (MM), Conservatorium van Amsterdam (post-graduate diploma) and the University of South Carolina (DMA). Her teachers include Arno Bornkamp, Clifford Leaman, Steven Mauk, and Debra Richtmeyer.