A revolutionary antidote to shouting into the void: Michelle Rofrano & Protestra

Sarah & Michelle

You pronounce the name, ‘PRO-testra’ (as in, protest + orchestra. Just so we’re clear).

I found them while researching my Churchill Fellowship application. Type ‘orchestra’ and ‘socially-engaged’ into your search engine and not much comes up, except these guys. Their feisty figurehead is New Jersey-based conductor Michelle Rofrano, who just happens to be on staff at Santa Fe Opera covering Maestro Gemma New for Britten’s Turn of the Screw.

We meet up at Tesuque Village Market, a short hop from the opera and therefore a popular hang for the artists - also perilously close to our Air BnB. There are several apprentices having pizza at the next table when Michelle arrives.

I start by asking her what she’d most like Australians to know about Protestra. She says it’s an activist orchestra with regular concerts trying to educate audiences about issues of social justice, made up of musicians who donate their time and talents performing and organising, and who believe we have a responsibility to use art to make a statement.

We unpack the question of musicians donating their time and talents more. I’m particularly interested because the projects I’ve run in Sydney at the Chris O’Brien Lifehouse are voluntary; I like giving my time and so do the other musicians who join in. But I’ve also received pushback from colleagues who believe an artist should never ask other artists to work for free; that we have such a hard time making a case for proper pay to the wider community that setting up a volunteer orchestra is doing everyone a disservice.

Michelle says Protestra’s first concert was entirely voluntary, but now they pay a small honorarium. The 2017 #NoBan concert, Protestra’s inaugural event and a response to the first Trump administration’s Muslim ban, came together in two weeks as an alternative to the ‘shouting into the void’ of social media. Since then, the orchestra has been grassroots funded, including for payment of a lump sum honorarium for musicians in acknowledgment of small costs incurred like parking or meals, or having to miss some teaching. Nevertheless, the honorarium is way below what professional musicians would expect to be paid. 

Michelle says that all musicians receive information about the honorarium up front, along with details of repertoire, dates, and other logistical details. They are also offered the option to donate their fee directly to the concert’s chosen charity in the musician’s own name. Michelle says about half of all Protestra musicians each concert donate their fee. Beyond that, the orchestra is covered almost entirely by fundraising; any fundraising monies and ticket sales in excess of their budget are donated to the concert’s charity partner.

Michelle thinks the honorarium, however small, goes some way towards acknowledging the orchestra is aware that players’ participation in a concert comes at a cost. She also points out that the organisers all donate their time, Michelle included.

But at the end of the day, it’s not about money. People come because they have a chance to play great repertoire (Mahler 5, anyone?) that’s a refreshing change after subbing on Broadway, often in chairs they wouldn’t normally play in their professional lives. Protestra works hard to create a collaborative, accepting environment; orchestra members can pitch causes for future concerts. And that’s often what’s most important: ‘People are just excited to play, and to use art to care about a real cause in the world, whereas a lot of times it’s like, for some reason, classical music and the real world seem separate,’ Michelle says.

I ask if the Protestra team auditions or vets players. So far, there’s been no real need, although they might review a video of someone they don’t know. It’s a self-selecting organisation; people ask to play because they support the premise. Michelle says of her musicians and volunteer organisers, ‘It does go back to human rights. If you fundamentally believe all people deserve to be treated with respect, deserve autonomy, and to create a life for themselves where they’re happy and they’re respected and fulfilled - and you look at the world and the systems that prevent so many people from doing that, then it’s like, okay, we’re fighting those systems and we should all fight them together! If you believe that, then come on down, and hopefully we’ll see eye to eye on the big things.’

Protestra is currently project-based (although Michelle is open to having it as her full time job, if anyone wants to fund an orchestra?). The season is largely based around  responding to current events, and everyone’s availability, especially Michelle’s. ‘Would I love to spend all of my time responding to everything, every single day? Yes. Can I? No. And it also benefits Protestra if I get to work other places too. I’m a better musician and I get to know more people.’

This also means they fundraise concert to concert. As Michelle points out, classical music is really expensive. There’s pretty much no government funding in the USA, so Protestra is funded almost entirely by grassroots donations from donors who believe in what they do. The occasional matched grant of $2,000 is a significant amount for them.

While this model means no single sponsor controls their messaging, leaving them completely free to work that out for themselves, available funds limit what the orchestra can do. Michelle is torn about what would happen if they did get a big donor who wanted to control some of their messaging.

We’re speaking on the same day that, back in Australia, the board of Creative Australia has just reversed its politically-prompted decision to drop Khaled Sabsabi and Michael Dagostino from the Venice Biennale. While the situation in 2025 USA is even more fraught than in 2025 Australia, artists in both communities face loss of funding if their work attracts criticism from government, or, in Australia’s case, if they choose to refuse funding offered to them by corporations to whom they have a moral opposition. To my mind, Protestra is making some pretty brave decisions in their programming, even if they don’t yet have corporate or government funding to lose.
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It’s an animated conversation, and somehow we end up spilling the corn chips all over the table. Should we we eat them anyway? Michelle jokes that with her Italian heritage, perhaps because they’re salty we should throw them over our left shoulder. The beagle at the next table looks hopeful, but ultimately loses out. The chips get eaten as we talk about how Protestra chooses its concert themes. 

‘We don’t shy away from issues even if they don’t directly affect us,’ says Michelle, ‘because I think it’s important for all of us to care about issues of human rights. We all should care, because that’s how you fix it.’ And if you don’t shy away from difficult issues, then you really need to think carefully about your messaging. Protestra’s goal of raising awareness and funds to improve human rights isn’t always a straightforward proposition in the twenty-first century, especially not for a group that wants to be both outspoken and inclusive.

Michelle says that for each concert, they have a lot of eyes on all the messaging, to make sure they’re capturing genuine perspectives. The Mahler 5 concert to raise funds for victims of war on Gaza is a key example. The team spent several weeks workshopping how to make the messaging strong enough to highlight the humanitarian crisis, without appearing to be apportioning blame. 
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‘Before we launch every concert, we joke about the “V” word - verbiage,’ says Michelle. ‘We’re like, we’re workshopping the verbiage for this concert. And we’re exhausted by the time we announce every concert, because it really goes through so many rounds of editing, especially our team members who might be more personally connected to the issue.’ Aware that learning about the issue is not the same as lived experience, the Protestra team always tries to get multiple people’s perspectives. And when they get negative feedback about their messaging, they treat it as a learning experience on how better to focus future messages for that person or group.

We finish by discussing the inevitable experience of burnout. We all laugh in recognition when it comes up, but it’s a rueful laugh. Yes, it happens to Michelle - by the time each concert ends, she usually needs a break. But whenever there’s space on her dance card, there’ll be another concert.

‘I want to believe that me, speaking up for an issue I care about, and you, and the musicians in the orchestra, will have some kind of ripple effect, even if it just gives someone else courage and they’re the ones who have a bigger effect. I want to believe it matters. Because if we don’t try, then nothing will get better.’