Meet the Team

Michelle Rofrano

Founder and Artistic Director

Michelle Rofrano is a Sicilian-American conductor with a keen interest in the intersection of art and social activism. An avid opera conductor, she is the current Resident Music Director of City Lyric Opera, a women-led company in NYC. Upcoming projects include serving as cover conductor for Proving Up with Lyric Opera of Chicago and The Merry Wives of Windsor with The Juilliard School. Previous engagements include conducting The Queen of Spades and Trouble in Tahiti with The Glimmerglass Festival; Don Quichotte at Comacho’s Wedding with Opera Saratoga; Le Nozze di Figaro with The Crane School of Music; An Evening of Contemporary American Opera and Trouble in Tahiti with Westminster Choir College; and Così fan tutte and The Turn of the Screw with DC Public Opera. She has served as assistant conductor for productions with Juilliard Opera, The Glimmerglass Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, Opera Saratoga, Florida Grand Opera, and Opera Birmingham. Rofrano is the Founder and Artistic Director of PROTESTRA, an activist orchestra that advocates for social justice through classical music. She is also a co-creator of Girls Who Conduct, an initiative that mentors young women and non-binary musicians in an effort to achieve gender parity on the conducting podium.

Ian Vlahović

Co-founder, Director of Operations & Chairman of the Board

Ian Vlahović is a co-founder of PROTESTRA and serves as Director of Operations and Chairman of the Board. Ian is a brass instrument repair technician by trade and, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, maintained a busy performance schedule as a freelance horn player in the NYC metropolitan area. He is a regular member of the Adelphi Orchestra (Oradell, NJ), the Richmond County Orchestra (Staten Island, NY), and the Westchester Symphonic Winds (Tarrytown, NY).

Ian is a certified K-12 music educator in the State of New Jersey. He holds Bachelor’s degrees in Music Education and Spanish from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. This past January, Ian returned to Rutgers, where he is now pursuing a Master of Public Policy at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy.

Ian is fascinated by the power of art and culture to affect broader societal change and is passionate about harnessing the power of the public and nonprofit sectors to support those efforts. He hopes to see PROTESTRA become a model of what a 21st century classical music organization can and should be. He is inspired and heartened to see—and is excited to be a part of—a growing community of people who believe that music and advocacy can be one and the same.

Samuel Gray

Executive Director

Sam Gray is a New York-based violinist, violist, administrator, producer, and music contractor. He is currently the Concertmaster and Executive Director of PROTESTRA, an orchestra that advocates for social justice through classical music. Sam is also the Principal Second of Parlando Chamber Orchestra as well as a performing member of the Bronx Arts Ensemble and Rendez-Vous Orchestra.

In his performance career, Sam has shared the stage with many great artists of our time, including Cyndi Lauper, Titus Burgess, Daniel Pemberton, Billy Eichner, Bryan Carter, and Kate Baldwin. Described as “immensely talented” by Broadway World, his work in musical theater has brought him to Radio City, Broadhurst Theatre on Broadway, Bucks County Playhouse, and The Gateway. In Fall 2024, he sat Concertmaster of the “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Live in Concert” National Tour produced by Sony in association with Marvel.

A fervent believer that music is healing to the soul, Sam produces intimate chamber music performances in unconventional places around New York. He is the co-producer and co-founder of Mini Masterworks, an annual series of living room concerts in collaboration with cellist Anthime Miller and pianist Ben Nylander.

Sam began his musical studies at the age of nine. His formative teachers include Patricia Cosand, Steven Moeckel, Sarah Plum, and Gary Kosloski. He performs on a 2014 Samuel
Zygmuntowicz violin generously on loan from Jay and Michiko Jones.

Elia Foster

Development Coordinator

Erin Schwab

Director of Design

Erin Schwab is an experienced performer, arts administrator, and teaching artist with a special interest in the intersection of art and social activism. She holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree in Music from Rutgers Mason Gross School of the Arts, where she studied Vocal Performance and was the recipient of the Michael Fardink award for “Outstanding Vocalist” and the Olga Marsano Burian award for “Outstanding Achievement in Music.” She received further vocal and stage training through scholarships at Maestro Lorin Maazel’s Castleton Festival, The Chautauqua Institution’s Opera Conservatory, and an artist residency at The Crested Butte Music Festival. She is adept at multiple styles of singing, ranging from the Baroque to the 21st century, and has performed many operatic roles including Susanna (Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro), Venus (Blow’s Venus & Adonis) Soeur Constance (Poulenc’s Les Dialogues des Carmélites), La Princesse (Ravel’s L'enfant et les sortilèges), Zan (Blitzstein’s Regina), Ginevra (Handel’s Ariodante), Nanetta (Verdi’s Falstaff), Lucia (Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia), Noémie (Massenet’s Cendrillon) and Lucy Lockit (Britten’s The Beggar's Opera). She is a highly accomplished and sought after concert soloist and choral ringer, and has been the soprano section leader at The Community Presbyterian Church in Ringwood, NJ since 2010.

In addition to her active freelance singing career, Erin currently serves as the Marketing & Communications Director for Music in the Somerset Hills, a nonprofit with the mission of creating high-quality musical experiences and fostering education, artistry, and community through music. In January 2022, she became the Chorus Manager for Downtown Voices, a semiprofessional choir in NYC made up of volunteer singers and GRAMMY®-nominated members of The Choir of Trinity Wall Street. In September 2022, she signed on as the Executive Director of Skylands Music Academy, a tuition-free after school program for students grades 1 through 8. She is also the Marketing Coordinator for PROTESTRA (protest + orchestra), a nonprofit organization with the mission of educating audiences about social justice issues through the context of classical music.

Nina Liu

Board Treasurer

Nina Liu is a violinist and asset management professional that joined the Protestra board of directors in 2023. Prior to moving to NYC, she played with the Des Moines Symphony (from 2011-2020) as well as multiple chamber ensembles. She continues to celebrate her love for playing violin, by being ann active player with several ensembles in NYC, including Protestra and Center Symphony Orchestra.

Priscilla Rinehart

Board Secretary

Priscilla Rinehart is delighted to have joined the horn section in the orchestra of Broadway’s The Phantom of the Opera this fall, after spending two seasons as a member of the Sarasota Orchestra. Playing the horn has allowed her to travel across the globe and have countless opportunities to deepen her understanding of people and our different societies. In 2019, she performed for the first time with Chineke! Orchestra in London, Sphinx Symphony Orchestra in Detroit and Gateways Music Festival in Rochester, NY. These three organizations assert cultural variety in the representation of classical music through programming choices and dynamic concerts. Motivated by their efforts and the Black Lives Matter movement, Priscilla is working to better advocate for marginalized people inside and outside of performance spaces. Priscilla is a board member for PROTESTRA.

Christina Morris

Assistant Conductor

Christina Morris is a young conductor with an energetic and unforgettable presence. She has studied under reputable artists such as Michael Tilson Thomas, Neeme Järvi, Mark Gibson, Mark Shapiro, Stefan Asbury, Lina González-Granados, and Michelle Rofrano. She has participated in the Tanglewood Music Festival as a conducting seminarian several years in a row. She has attended master classes at the New World Symphony, as well as Juilliard and many more. Christina was also recently accepted as an assistant conductor for the Chineke! Orchestra based in London UK. She is enthusiastic about working with organizations whose missions also seek to liberate all identities through advocacy and representation. Christina is passionate about teaching students privately, instructing instrumental and music theory lessons. As an aspiring orchestral conductor with a unique background in the classical music industry, she is looking to promote the artistic value of underrepresented and underestimated identities. Subjective in its nature, music possesses the potential to personally influence us all, no matter the differences and/or similarities in identity. Christina is passionately enthusiastic about pursuing her goals to ignite and expose the classical music community to the possibility of change and true diversity.

Jennifer Jordan

Website Coordinator

Jennifer Jordan is a cellist and nonprofit professional. She is a versatile performer and copywriter, dedicated to increasing the impact of mission-driven ensembles and organizations.

Jennifer’s extensive concertizing includes solo and chamber music performances coast to coast across the United States in renowned venues such as National Sawdust (NYC) as part of NextFest, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, Eugene’s Beall Hall (OR), and Bloomington’s Ford Hall (IN). A passionate and sought-after orchestral player, Jennifer is Assistant Principal Cellist of the Newport Symphony and a member of the Eugene Concert Orchestra, and previously held positions as principal cellist with the Miami Music Festival, performing at the New World Center with the Miami Opera Orchestra, and as a member of the Evansville Philharmonic. She also performs with the Oregon Symphony, Eugene Symphony, Oregon Mozart Players, Vancouver Symphony, and Yakima Symphony. With a highly skilled and adaptive playing style, Jennifer explores more nontraditional venues with the cello/bass quartet Porchello, a Portland-based group performing popular and movie music. She holds degrees from Indiana University, Boston Conservatory, and the University of Oregon, where she graduated as the “Outstanding Undergraduate in Strings.”

Lucia Lostumbo

Personnel & HR Coordinator

Lucia Lostumbo is a Philadelphia based violinist who received her Bachelor of Music degree from Temple University’s Boyer College of Music and Dance in 2018. She graduated cum laude. While at Temple she studied with Davyd Booth of The Philadelphia Orchestra, and Meichen Liao-Barnes of The Philadelphia Chamber Orchestra. She played for Temple’s Symphony Orchestra as well as their Opera Orchestra and numerous chamber ensembles. In 2019 Lucia was a part of the American Institute of American Studies Orchestra in Graz, Austria. Her other summer festival experience includes the Mediterranean Opera Studio Festival in Sicily, Brevard Music Center, the National Music Festival, and the Miami Music Festival. Originally from the Washington, DC area, Lucia began studying at the age of seven, and by sixteen had several private students of her own. She now maintains a busy schedule of teaching private students, as well as playing other gigs in the Philadelphia and New York areas. Lucia is also a dedicated organizer with Protestra, a non-profit orchestra based in New York City, as well as the artistic administrator for City Lyric Opera.

Michaela Wright

Organizer

Michaela Wright is a Mezzo-Soprano, voice teacher, and non-profits marketing specialist based in Orlando, Florida.

She recently made her role debut with Opera Orlando in Baseball: A Musical Love Letter , made her Orlando Fringe debut as Mina in The Bloody Hatchet (Nathan Felix Opera Productions,) was seen as Hansel in Hansel and Gretel with Opera del Sol at The Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, as Igor Stravinsky in the world premiere of Nathan Felix’s ‘No.5’ at Timucua Arts, and as the Alto Soloist for “The Messiah.”

Michaela has a passion for arts advocacy and is an experienced and gifted educator as well. She works as a Teaching Artist for A Noteworthy Music Studio and through Central Florida Vocal Arts’ Arts 1:1 program which provides private, voice lessons to students with Title I status at no cost to the students. In addition, she maintains the role as the Director of Digital Marketing and Social Media Management for both Central Florida Vocal Arts and Opera del Sol.

Michaela holds Master of Music in Opera Performance and Literature from The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Bachelor of Music in vocal performance from Jacksonville University.