Performers
BRIDGES
About: Growing up Black and Japanese in Texas, Bridges stands at an intersection of identities and embodies her name, creating unexpected connections and music that belongs to everyone. With genre-defying sound, textured vocals, and soulful lyrics, she empowers audiences to link up, to thrive, and to join her for a quest for joy.
Social Media: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, BRIDGES's website
Austin Halls
About: Austin Halls is a powerful force redefining beauty, confidence, and what it means to be seen. Born with Moebius Syndrome—a rare neurological condition that causes facial paralysis— it took him eight years and four facial surgeries to achieve a full smile, but his presence and impact have always spoken louder than words.
With viral features on Snapchat Originals, Truly, Instagram and widely viewed documentaries on YouTube (surpassing 100,000 views), Austin is using digital platforms to spark real conversations around disability, identity, and self-expression. His bold presence and unapologetic storytelling challenge outdated narratives, replacing them with visibility, education, and empowerment.
Austin isn’t just part of the conversation—he’s leading it, proving that authentic representation can educate, inspire, and change the way we see each other.
Social Media: Instagram, Website, LinkedIn, Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, SoundCloud, iHeart
Precious Perez
About: Precious Perez, also known as La Reggaetonera Ciega (The Blind Reggaetonera), is a Puerto Rican music artist, songwriter, actress, author, educator, and disability advocate. She holds dual bachelor’s degrees in Music Education and Vocal Performance from Berklee College of Music and serves as Advisor Emeritus for RAMPD (Recording Artists and Music Professionals with Disabilities).
Based in Louisville, Kentucky, Precious is the lead vocalist of a local party pop cover band and teaches voice at Mom’s Music, all while balancing her many roles as a performer, educator, and advocate.
Through her music, Precious is passionate about uplifting and celebrating the many communities she represents. Her mission is to challenge stereotypes, expand representation, and become the first blind Latina at the forefront of the mainstream music industry, proving that disability is never a barrier to excellence.
Social Media: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Precious' website
4 Wheel City Foundation
About: Spearheaded by Namel “Tapwaterz” Norris and Ricardo “Rickfire” Velasquez, distinguished wheelchair users due to spinal cord injuries, 4 Wheel City Foundation is at the forefront of advocating for disability rights and social change through music. Namel and Ricardo are known for their empowering music and have utilized hip hop as a powerful tool to raise consciousness on accessibility, discrimination, and resilience. Through their personal journey, 4 Wheel City exemplifies how hip hop can drive conversations and facilitate change.
Social Media: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Spotify
Gwap Mula
About: Hailing from Harlem, Gwap Mula is a musician and entrepreneur whose work blends creativity and and lived experience. With releases including Paralyzation, The Odds, and Project Baby, he brings a distinct voice and perspective to his music, creating sounds that are authentic and intentional. Beyond music, he leads several ventures, including PGM Visuals, ShoeDocNYC, and PGM Gives Back, a community initiative focused on youth empowerment.
Social Media: Instagram, Facebook, Spotify, Apple Music, SoundCloud, Amazon Music
Zo Wheelz
About: Zo Wheelz is a hip-hop artist from Chicago whose music transforms personal experiences into powerful stories of resilience, struggle, and success. Through raw lyrics and authentic storytelling, Zo shares his journey before and after a spinal cord injury, using his art, voice, and apparel to advocate for wheelchair-users and the disability community. At his core, Zo Wheelz represents the power of self-expression.
Social Media: Instagram, Apple Music, Spotify, SoundCloud, Amazon Music
Miamoney
About: Dubbed the "Hardest Rapper on Wheels," Miamoney is a rapper, disability rights advocate, and content creator. Since her viral debut on Dirty Glove Bastard's Off the Porch, Mia has been featured by Trash Mag and DJ Scream's Just Bars, appeared on Kai Cenat's livestream, and gained recognition from artists including Sexy Red and Lil Duval. She also serves as executive producer of Pressure TV's Baddies On Wheels, a series spotlighting disabled women.
Social Media: Instagram, TikTok, Spotify, Apple Music, SoundCloud, iHeart, YouTube, Audiomack, Deezer
Jessica Wallach
About: Jessica Wallach works with Story Tapestries as the artistic lead for this year’s collaborative art installation. Her work as both an artist and educator reflects a lifelong commitment to expanding access through collaboration, exploration, and connection, especially in the arts. Through her practice, Jessica challenges perspective and invites us to reflect on our relationship with our bodies and the many ways we experience, interpret, and move through the world. We are deeply grateful for the care, vision, and insight she brings to this work.
Social Media: Story Tapestries' Instagram
Ai Hiraoka
About: Her name itself is a message: "Hira" (平) stands for Peace, and "Ai" (愛) stands for Love. Together, Ai Hiraoka embodies the essence of "Peace & Love." She believes in the quiet yet powerful force of music to connect hearts across the globe. She hosts a monthly gathering called "Pray for Earth ~Heiwa no Utage~" (Peaceful Banquet), creating a space where people and the world are gently united through music and prayer. She also launched the Self Love Hug initiative with the goal of making August 9th "Our Hug Day," with the belief that by first embracing and loving ourselves, we can create a ripple effect that touches the entire planet.
Social Media: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube
BETTA FLASH
About: Cyua was raised by a mother who is a certified shamisen instructor and a professional-level performer of Nagauta and folk songs, and she naturally followed in her mother’s footsteps to become a singer. After the disbandment of the techno vocal unit “FILTRIKE,” she began her solo career. As a singer, she has contributed to numerous theme songs and insert songs for anime such as “Attack on Titan” and “Gundam Unicorn,” as well as for video games and TV dramas.
TAMAYO began studying composition as early as kindergarten. After graduating from music college, she worked as a video game composer—a field that was still in its infancy at the time. She also composed soundtracks for TV dramas and films. After working at Capcom and Taito, she met Cyua, and together they formed BETTA FLASH, a vocal unit that creates genre-defying, borderless music blending techno and folk elements. Their songs construct a unique, one-of-a-kind world built upon the fusion of their distinct sensibilities.
Social Media: Cyua's Instagram, Tamayo's Instagram
DefStar
About: DefStar is a Dip-Hop Artist (hip-hop through Deaf eyes) or Deaf rapper performing original songs in American Sign Language.
Social Media: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok
Megumi Meepeso
About: Megumi Meepeso is a Japanese artist, model, MC, and peace activist whose work integrates music and social impact. She was introduced at the United Nations for her activities. Her career includes kimono modeling and stage work such as JTB Kanazawa Ozasiki Higashi Chaya PR model, Hakubi Kyoto Kimono Academy ambassador, Ishikawa Collection Kaga Yuzen runway model, and award-winning kimono runway work. She appeared in magazines, TV, and radio, participates in Music for SDGs. She joined the UN PRI in Person side event at Tokyo Tower as a model, contributing to sustainability. Born with an invisible disability and later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and intellectual disability (Grade 2), she experienced bullying, depression, and school refusal, but turned these experiences into empathy and strength. Today she promotes inclusion and self-acceptance, sharing the message that everyone can create a place to belong through music and culture.
Social Media: Instagram, Facebook
Mira Gaitanis
About: Mira Gaitanis was born as a micro-preemie at 26 weeks and has low vision. Her musical journey began in first grade with the violin, evolving through middle school orchestra where she discovered her voice on the viola. As a member of the Tallahassee Youth Orchestra, she progressed from Chamber to Symphony Orchestra, earning multiple selections as principal violist. Her formative years also included the Fiddlers and Acoustic Ensemble, where she was immersed in Celtic music, folk music, old-time traditions, and improvisational playing, experiences that would shape her artistic direction. She also co-founded Flat Moon Theory in 2016.
By 2019, Flat Moon Theory was ready to professionalize. Mira leaned into polishing her songwriting by creating poetry under the handle Arim Viola. Mira also spearheaded Kickstarter campaigns for Dreamers in the Dark (23 backers, $1,056) and Growing from Here (55 backers, $3,889), utilizing strategies from Crush Your Kickstarter course by Laser Campaigns.
Social Media: LinkTree, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube
Rika Azuma
About: Rika Azuma is an international singer who delivers songs to the world as a representative of Japan. She has won awards at international competitions, including Best Vocal Performance, and has also received recognition from the Ministry of Health and Welfare in Korea. She has been praised by royalty and celebrities. She has successfully performed in a music show at Carnegie Hall in New York. Despite being told that she might not live past the age of 20 due to illness in her childhood, she overcame a serious illness. From that experience, she has been involved in supporting disaster recovery, welfare facilities, and children with disabilities.
Social Media: Personal Website, Instagram, Facebook, X/Twitter
River Onyx
About: River Onyx is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores the tension between inner chaos and the search for grounding, clarity, and connection, guided by emotional honesty and a desire to translate internal experience into something shared and deeply felt. As an autistic trans artist and former foster youth, river creates through sensitivity, intuition, and emotional depth. His work reflects overstimulation, cyclical healing, questions of identity, belonging, and transformation, while resisting rigid definitions or polished simplicity.
Spirituality and intuition play a central role in his process. rooted in vulnerability and emotional truth, River’s songs and performances hold contradiction without forcing resolution, strength and fragility, isolation and intimacy, chaos and connection existing side by side. His work seeks to offer recognition, healing, and space for complexity, reminding people they are not alone in what they carry.
Social Media: Instagram, TikTok, Spotify, SoundCloud, Apple Music, Amazon Music
Samantha Elisofon
About: Samantha Elisofon is a professional performing artist on the autism spectrum. She co-starred in an award -winning movie, Keep The Change (2017 Tribeca Film Festival, Best Film & Best Actress Nomination.) She is a founding cast member of Epic Players and involved in and connected to a mix and match of other neuro-inclusive theater groups, Action Play as an assistant teaching artist, Co/Lab as a leader, assistant teaching artist, DreamStreet, a member, performer, New Ambassadors, member, audience support member, etc and is also a member of Actors Equity. She performed most recently in two one woman shows, including “My Resilience & Inspirations” at the Triad theater on June 21, 2022, then three years later in “Daring To Dream” at the Saint John’s Church in the West Village on Sept, 12, 2025.
Social Media: Samantha's website, Instagram, YouTube, X/Twitter
Sierra McCarthy
About: Sierra McCarthy is a singer/songwriter, writer, movie/video maker, and graphic artist! She's 30 years old and lives in San Diego, California. She has mild cerebral palsy but it doesn’t define her. She's won Disability Unite Got Talent a couple times before and is excited to have won it again.
Social Media: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube
Zazel O'Garra
About: Zazel-Chavah O’Garra (she/her) is the Artistic Director of ZCO/DANCEPROJECT, a physically integrated dance company. Her work has been showcased in theaters, public spaces, and festivals such as ADA 30, WESTFEST Dance Festival, Judson Church, Dixon Place Theatre, Symphony Space, Cooper Hewitt Museum, ABILITIES EXPO, Theatre for the New City, Jamaica Performing Arts Center and the International Dance Festival, Karditsa, Greece. Zazel has also participated in artist residencies, including Downtown Brooklyn Arts, Fertile Ground at Green Space, and ARTS4ALLFLORIDA Artist Residency at the University of Southern Florida.
Before founding ZCO/DANCEPROJECT, Zazel built a successful career in the performing arts, with a body of work that spans concert stages, Off-Broadway productions, European tours, national commercials, and features in runway shows, catalogs, and on the covers of Essence Magazine. Zazel holds a BFA from U of Michigan, MSW -Fordham University and is SAG-AFTRA, Equity.
Social Media: Personal Instagram, ZCO/DANCEPROJECT Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, X/Twitter