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, Board President

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.

Christina Morris

Associate 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.

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.