New rules, new strategy: protestra’s ian Vlahović on modern musical activism

“It’s kind of like trying to build a plane in midair, but that’s the fun of it.” PROTESTRA Co-founder and board Chair Ian Vlahović says, negotiating a rice paper roll at a Vietnamese restaurant in New York City. Since he’s been involved in PROTESTRA with co-founder Michelle Rofrano from the beginning, I’ve asked him to tell me how it all began.

“PROTESTRA was Michelle’s idea”, he says. “Michelle & I both used to be really active in social media, typing out long, righteously-justified rants about everything that goes on, and one day she just gave me a call, and was like, what if we just stopped creating these rants, and did something a little more tangible?”

PROTESTRA’s first concert came soon after Trump’s first election, taking the form of a classical music benefit concert for immigration, as the Muslim ban was “big news”. The concert was organised in two weeks.

“Would it be just crazy?”, Ian remembers them asking each other. “And the answer is yes, and it continues to be yes, but maybe it’s better to channel the rage than just shouting into the void, or the echo chamber. Music has the additional emotional impact that a social media rant doesn’t — it has more chance of shifting the dial.”

He describes those two weeks as a “whirlwind”; he and Michelle spent pretty much eight hours every day at the same coffee shop (“they got to know us really well”), turning over the same problem. “We have literally zero dollars, and we’re not going to get more than zero dollars — and why would we? We’re not a non-profit, not an organisation, and that’s where this realisation [came] that a lot of musicians do care about this, and they are willing to donate their time.”

When your cause galvanises people, it turns out ‘zero dollars’ might not be the barrier it seems. Michelle and Ian found an empathetic church willing to be their concert venue; several living composers donated their music, minus licensing fees. To build the orchestra, the pair relied heavily on fellow alumni, as both were recent graduates.

And within two weeks, PROTESTRA’s first concert was held, with 50-60 orchestra members, and 150 people in the audience, raising about $3,000 for various NGOs. “It’s always been about finding like-minded people who have a resource to offer, whether it’s the space, or their time”, Ian says. That first concert didn’t cost anything, except time — “and probably a couple of hundred bucks each in coffee”.

Busy and diverging schedules led to a break until 2020, but early that year, Ian recalls getting “another one of those phone calls”. Michelle had a gap in her dance card, and was aiming for a late spring/early summer outdoor concert focussed on climate change. And then —  Covid. Like many arts organisations, PROTESTRA went virtual, but also used the time to start the organisation. The climate concert happened a year or so later, sparsely attended as people were still Covid-nervous. Protestra has held a number of concerts and satellite events since.

Along with the fearlessness of their approach, PROTESTRA’s most impressive aspect is that it functions without any major donors or funding. On average, PROTESTRA concerts cost $20,000-25,000 each, which includes venue hire and also paying musicians an honorarium — the middle ground between volunteering (the standard charity benefit model) and paying full wage. “There are definitely more economical ways to be an activist than put on a classical music concert”, Ian jokes. Pretty much the entirety of this amount needs to be raised from donors; PROTESTRA doesn’t even count ticket sales as income when projecting a concert budget. And that $20,000-$25,000 dollars usually needs to be found before each concert is announced, although sometimes the team gets 60% of the way there and commits anyway, as they’ve discovered people are more likely to donate to a project which has momentum over one that’s just an idea.

Ian says they often receive feedback that the orchestra looks really professional. While it’s gratifying, and helpful in terms of profile and communication, Ian also flags this perception as a possible disadvantage: a polished product can create assumptions that the orchestra’s well-funded. Yet in reality, everyone’s in it for the love. Like Michelle, Ian would love to run PROTESTRA full time — he says he’s has never had a job as meaningful.

I point out how gutsy what PROTESTRA is doing looks — their first concert in 2025 was called the Presidential Transition Protest Concert. But the reality is, neither Ian, Michelle, nor their musicians feel able to remain as bystanders. “If you’ll pardon the profanity, I’ve always considered our subtitle, ‘musicians who give a f**k’, and it’s really heartening to see how many there are that do,” says Ian. The orchestra gets people asking to play “all the time”, offering their resumes and asking to audition. Again, there’s the perception of professionalism, but in reality all the PROTESTRA team needs is a couple of videos just to make sure candidates can “play the notes”.

Ian notes that the younger generation is highly motivated in terms of activism. PROTESTRA membership skews towards musicians in their 20’s and 30’s, although the age range is from 18-70+.  We discuss the changing nature of protest: that what used to be effective, isn’t. “When the rules go out the window, you gotta change up the strategy,” Ian says. “I don’t know exactly what that is, but we’re trying one way here… We’re trying to redefine what it means to be an activist and how you can be an activist — it’s not all about the frontline. We’re just trying to create those opportunities for people.”

​We’re both shocked to realise we’ve been in the restaurant for two hours. The time has vanished, along with the iced coffees, but I leave inspired by so much time in the company of this new breed of arts activist. It just goes to show that, when you stop shouting into the void and offer something honest and a bit brave instead, you might find it’s not the void you thought it was, after all.

Restaurant selfie - myself and Ian