First off, the ‘ghost faders’ have nothing to do with your monitoring issue. It appears that the plugin didn’t capture the mixer state initially. Unless this happens more often, you may just ignore it.
Second, if the VST Connect Monitor plugin is present and inserted after the Monitor Channel that your speakers are connected to, you should indeed hear the Performer at any time. Obviously his signal gets thru.
Check that the VST Connect plugin ‘MONITOR - PERF’ is raised to some level, and that the VST Connect Monitor plugin is inserted after the very Monitor Bus that you are actually listening to (if you listen via Control Room/Headphones, move that plugin there).
More can be found here, if it still fails let us know.