(upbeat music) - [Lara] The Cohoes Music Hall resonates with live music and theater under Playhouse Stage Company's management.

James Mitchell uses art as a tool to develop life skills in children, and catch a performance by Ali Sifflet.

It's all ahead on this episode of AHA!

A House for Arts.

- [Narrator] Funding for AHA!

has been provided by your contribution and by contributions to the WMHT venture fund.

Contributors include The Leo Cox Beach Philanthropic Foundation, Chet and Karen Opalka, Robert and Doris Fisher Malesardi, the Alexander and Marjorie Hover Foundation and the Robison Family Foundation.

- At M&T bank, we understand that the vitality of our communities is crucial to our continued success.

That's why we take an active role in our community.

M&T bank is pleased to support WMHT programming that highlights the arts, and we invite you to do the same.

(upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Lara Ayad and this is AHA, A House for Arts, a place for all things creative.

I hear Matt is visiting a local music hall that he's never been to before, let's see where he is.

- I'm here on Remsen Street in Cohoes at the Cohoes Music Hall.

And you know what?

I've actually never been here before.

So I'm excited to see what's going on inside.

Follow me.

- When we took management of the building, I think that there was probably some concern out there among people who had become fans of seeing live music and stand up comedy here.

"Well, if a theater company is running it, it's just gonna be musicals and plays."

Nothing could be further from the truth.

We want this to be the capital Regions Boutique performing arts center.

We want to have every artistic discipline in the performing arts represented on our stage.

So, whether you're a fan of rock, blues, jazz, stand up, family events for the kids, we wanna have a little bit of everything.

Certainly it's a great place in which to mount our own productions and we have wonderful new partners in Creative License who are bringing plays to the stage alongside our musicals, but we really want everyone to be able to find something of interest on our stage here at the music hall and so far, we've been able to pull that off.

You could talk about the history of this hall for hours and hours and hours, and only scratch the surface.

The building was built in 1874.

It's the fourth oldest music hall in the country that's currently in operation.

And you know, the first thing I point to is just the roster of people that performed here, I'm mindful of it every time I walk into the building.

Buffalo Bill Cody, Annie Oakley, George M Cohan, Sarah Bernhardt, I mean, people who were truly legends of their time, who played right here in the capital region at Cohoes Music Hall.

And now our students get to perform on this stage.

We get to have musicians that are popular, come and play on this stage, but it's just so incredible, the wealth of history here.

Well tonight we have a rehearsal for the upcoming opening of Creative Licenses, production of the comedy, "Significant Other", which is really just a beautiful piece.

And we're so excited for them to make their debut here at the music hall.

- It's gonna make people laugh.

It's gonna make people really value all of the relationships in their life.

It's running now through Sunday the 21st.

When we started in 2014, we were working out of the Albany Barn, which is a creative arts incubator in Arbor hill.

And that had been a wonderful spot for us, but we felt like we were starting to outgrow it a little bit, which is the intention of the barn.

So this partnership came at such a wonderful time and it has been so much fun being here and getting ready for our next show.

Our next show after "Significant Other" is "God of Carnage", which if you're a theater person, you hear God of Carnage and you usually immediately laugh and go, "Oh, that will be great."

It's a four person show.

It's really fast paced, it's a lot of fun.

It gets really wild and that is gonna have myself and my partner, Erin, and our two collaborators that we work with all of the time, Ian LaChance and Bree Julianellie So that'll be so much fun and that's in the spring.

And then beyond that, we're not sure yet we have a whole list of shows that we have always wanted to do, but never quite had the right venue to do them.

So I think we're really excited to revisit that list and bring some new ideas here to the musical.

- The month of December is jam packed and it's jam packed, not only with holiday based entertainment, things like the Edwards twins, Christmas with the stars.

We have two nights of Santa sing along.

We have the Capitol region Pride Singers presenting a Celtic Christmas concert, but also some great tribute acts like history that recreates a live kiss show on the stage and a whole journey set that's being played by the local band, Legend.

And then of course on new year's Eve, we have our first night of a first night of funny produced by Standup Global.

So there's just so much coming up.

In fact, a not a day goes by.

It feels right now that there aren't shows getting booked onto the calendar.

And that's an especially good feeling given the fact that we had 18 months where we couldn't do a single thing on this stage.

So I encourage folks just to keep an eye on the website and the social media and all of that to see what's coming up 'cause it's constantly changing.

We refer to the Cohoes Music Hall as the area's most intimate and historic performance venue.

And I think we stand by that.

Not only is it because it was opened in 1874, but it's just amazing how close you sit to the action, you know, because of its horseshoe shape, no one is more than 50, 60 feet away from the the singer or the artist on stage.

And to be able to see some of these artists like a Joe Louis Walker and be that close is just something really special.

And it's also really wonderful how acoustically tuned this building is.

They understood how to design for sound and when they were building these buildings back in the day.

And so, you know, when you're in watching an intimate theatrical performance, no microphones, everything just kind of carries very naturally through the hall.

So it's a comfortable place to see a show.

It's a convenient place to see a show.

It's easy to park here in Downtown Cohoes.

There's a great environment.

That's building up and down Remsen Street and beyond with restaurants in Cohoes that are just doing really, really good work.

So I think it's the kind of place where you can spend a fun night out and get to see something in a really intimate and historic place that you might not get to see anywhere else.

- James Mitchell is the founder of Young Futures.

Providing art programs that allow children to explore their passions while teaching them financial literacy and other essential life skills.

How did Hurricane Sandy inspire James to start this work?

Let's hear from James to learn more.

James, welcome to A House For Arts.

It's such a pleasure to have you.

- Awesome.

Thank you for having me.

I'm extremely humbled by being here.

- Well we are so happy to have you.

And you're the founder of young futures Incoporated that's based in Albany.

And I understand that it's coming up now on its ninth birthday, or its recently hit its ninth birthday.

So congratulations for that.

- Thank you.

Thank you so much.

- So tell us what Young Future sets out to do.

- So realistically I tell people Young Futures is the community, right?

We try to listen to what is necessary and what is needed and address those matters.

Me personally, I am a community servant and a community leader.

So through that, I've created activities for children to really help them have outlets.

But at the same time, we use education also as an underlying method in our art classes to make sure with teaching and raising the consciousness of the children and families that participates in our program.

- So you've got a lot of different age groups in there.

How old are the children usually?

- Well, they range, we've had children as young as five participate in our programs and as old as 17.

- That's really amazing.

So, so it was a large range.

We currently run a financial literacy art class and the information is pertinent for even adults.

So it really encompasses a lot of different age groups.

- That is really fascinating.

And I want to come back to this kind of interesting intergenerational dynamic that you try to foster at Young Futures, but I'm just curious, James, how did this all begin for you?

- Very interesting.

We originally started as just someone wanting to serve.

I moved to Albany, moved back to Albany in 2012 and at the time Hurricane Sandy was happening and I said, Hey, you know what?

I had a bunch of coats home and I had been collecting coats and giving out coats.

That was one of our first conditions - In the Albany area, - In the Albany Area, yep.

Right in Urban Hill, West Hill and the south end.

And literally driving around I remember during Hurricane Sandy, that was my reason to get up and get out and remember driving around giving coats to different people that obviously was wearing sweaters.

You could tell that it was a wasn't that cold of a day, but we were going into that season.

So I made sure that I had a trunk full of coats and gave away a decent amount of coats.

From there, we started to really find out what was necessary, again, just listening to the community.

- Right.

Being there on the ground and kind of paying attention to how people respond and maybe what they tell you, and.

- Absolutely.

And that allowed me to really start to create our activity programs.

- Okay.

So that was really the initial start.

We didn't really find our footing until about 2015.

And at that point we started working with different community organizations like the Albany Barn and African-American Culture Center doing classes at those locations.

- Right.

And I know, you sit on the board of directors too, for the African-American Cultural Center.

- I do.

Just serving in any capacity.

I can.

- I'm curious to know about any early life experiences that you had, that you think might've inspired you to really take on this challenge and support others and give other people resources as both a servant and a leader.

- I think really just my upbringing.

You know, I grew up in a neighborhood that had a lot of needs.

Individuals had a lot of needs and I would definitely say my mom did a great job of making sure I would need to met.

So I vividly remember giving things away.

You know, when I had clothes, once we had new clothes, giving our old clothes, our old sneakers away and just having that experience of people, one, taken pride in the stuff that we were given away.

I remember when my peer group always being, not necessarily the leader, but someone that took initiative and kind of steered us in a direction or steered us away from, you know, maybe bad little boy behaviors.

But... - You need a little bit of that though, to kind of get yourself stick on, right?.

- Oh yeah, we will.

That was part of the nature growing up, you grow up.

Right.

- Right.

- But I definitely remember just kind of taking different initiatives and different direction and people want to follow or be behind me.

Because I was confident and also encouraging them what we were doing.

- Right.

You know, I know you have a really eclectic professional background.

That you've worked to help people make career transitions in underserved communities.

And I know that you also did some care counseling or mental health counseling as well as at other facilities.

And I'm curious to know what is something that you've learned through these earlier professional experiences that kind of surprised you?

- I think one of the things that I've learned is people are willing to, for the most are to listen and willing to adjust their perspective, but you have to be open enough to, you know, share that feeling with them.

Share what they're going through and before just interjecting what they should or should not be doing.

- Can you maybe like give an example of something like that?

Cause that's really interesting.

- Absolutely.

I always tell people I curve at curb attitudes, right?

So again, just speaking about when I was working with young men at a group home.

Obviously young boys from between the ages of 14 and 17.

Full of pride, full of confidence, but also a lot of insecurities that they didn't want to show.

For me, I've always found myself in a space of, one either, keeping them in that group.

So we can have an honest conversation about, "Hey, these are the things that you're doing.

Not only this is the direction you're going in," but making sure that they knew, "Hey, I had some of those similar experiences."

and giving them the perspective that I now have at current day.

- Right.

- But at the same time I had when I was their age.

- Right.

- So they can see some similarities in themselves and me, but at the same time using my experience to make a better decision.

- And that you're a role model.

You know, you've had those similar experiences, but then you've become a mentor for them.

You're like, okay, well, if he can do that, then I can do that too.

- Absolutely.

I pride myself in the fact that some of those roles were 2007.

And to this day, I still keep in contact with a lot of those individuals.

Because again, if you don't see it, it's hard for you to believe in it.

And one of the things that I try to explain to people is for me as a person, we all have individuals that will tell us what we should be doing.

But it's a big difference when someone's actually gonna take your hand and walk you into those doors, walk you into those , you know, to that direction.

And if not, give you the resources to do some of the things that you need to do.

- That's an excellent point.

And I want to come back to 14 year olds for a minute, cause I understand you have a daughter.

- I do.

- Well, did she play something of a role too in getting, and kind of like inspiring you to get started with the sort of the roots of Young Futures, the roots of this early community work.

- Absolutely.

If you let her tell her tell it, she is a Co-CEO of Young Futures.

In some of our earlier programs, she was right there in the room with me as I was creating them.

One of our flagship programs, Art and Sole, which is a program where ... - And Sole?

- Art And Sole yes, like the sole of the sneaker.

- Okay.

- Its a program with children.

We give children and pair a white canvas sneakers.

Typically we have a stint suit design on them and they fill them in.

If they're skilled enough, they'll design their own shoe.

And that program really came from, from me and her being in the room.

I remember I bought a pair of white canvas sneakers to wear with a pink salmon shirt.

I wore them for the summer and when winter time came around, it was still shoes weren't fit for the season.

- Right.

- And Layla asked me, "Hey dad, can I paint these shoes?"

And we went in that back room where I would do some work and then writing put some newspaper down and we designed the shoes.

- Amazing.

- I still have them to this day.

- That's great.

- And at that moment I realized this was a fun experience.

And I wanted to make sure that other people had that experience.

So we, you know, started that initiative of making sure that program was out and other people can have that same experience.

And I would like that six years later, we're still doing it.

- I want to kind of pan out big picture too, because there's been a real push on the hands of like Educational Injustice Organizations to encourage girls of color to go into STEM fields, for instance.

And I know, so I'm thinking of like Techbridge Girls or something like that.

For instance, and this is a nationwide push.

And as we keep relying more and more on technology to communicate and create jobs.

I know you're very concerned with like job making and financial literacy.

You know, how do you envision the potential for a reinvestment in the arts, just in the way that we're reinvesting in the sciences to support, you know, youth of color and youth coming from underserved communities?

- I really think they're, they're both hand in hand, right?

Well, in the case of art, we need that creativity.

One, to keep our brains flowing, right?

The creative space, once you're, once you're in that space and you're able to take a drawing or maybe something that you're writing and take it from where it is, and it's not a whole piece and continue to work at it, change at it or modify it and to create something that is brand new and something of your liking it, encourages you in that artistic space.

But at the same time, when you go out into the world, it gives you a sense of confidence that you can almost build something from your bare hands.

And we, one of the things that I do teach is everything came from the mind of someone else, right?

Whether it be these phones that we use, these high tech computers, or now we're having wearable tech glasses, right?

That all came from the mind of someone else.

And it's the same thing when it comes to creativity.

You have to have that belief and that confidence, whether it's a poem you're writing or a artistic picture, you're drawing, you have to see it from this blank canvas.

And over a period of time, it might not happen in a day, might not happen over the course of a week, but for you continue to labor over it, that experience alone will give you confidence and really allow it to transfer into other spaces in your life.

- Yeah.

I heard some philosopher and now I'm forgetting his name, say something like, you know, whenever human beings are unique because they make the unreal real.

And it sounds like what you're saying, James, its both in the arts and in the sciences, that's precisely what we're doing.

We're making the unreal real, whether that's a drawing or whether that's, you know, coming up with some type of virtual reality technology or whatever that may be.

- Absolutely.

- That's really great that you're bringing that into, you know, this space with these children.

So I've heard some great things about your recent painting, Sip Activity at Young Futures.

What other kinds of exciting activities do you have coming up for the winter and for the future.

- For the winter we have, as I mentioned before, financial literacy art class.

I'm extremely excited about this class because, one, its teaching children, the basics of financial literacy, starting with the importance of banking.

We're really letting them ,one, know where currency comes from, what it derives from.

Why is it important, right?

Because... - I wanna take this class.

(Lara laughing) - please by all means, as long as you come with the intention to be a big kid.

(Lara laughs) So yeah, starting with that, it did also go in into budgeting, right?

As an adult, we know we can't do many things if we're not properly budgeting our income.

And when you do properly budget your income, you'll find that you have so many, so much more resources to do other things.

It's just a matter of planning.

So that's why we kind of had that conversation with children.

A budget is nothing more than a plan for your money, right?

You wouldn't go out aside and not know what you're doing.

So you shouldn't do the same thing with your money.

Our next class is teaching Assets and Liabilities.

We really go into using examples in class.

'Cause you know, a lot of children wear sneakers, that's over a hundred dollars.

And I showed them literally in class, how they can create a business with the sneakers that we have, whether they design or not, and create that a hundred dollars from this, from this concept.

- Its incredible.

So you're like Kind of meeting them where they are getting them in touch with something they're already familiar with.

And then building from that... - Absolutely.

- Like, this is how you can learn about this whole economic and financial concept.

- That's the way I teach.

Because again, sometimes things are so far out that it's unbelievable and you don't believe you as a person, depending on your upbringing or the influences that are around you, that you can be capable of it.

So I really try to teach it from the ground level.

And like you said, meet them where they are.

So in that moment they could see how it's realistic.

- Those programs sound fantastic James and I want to take these financial literacy courses.

- By all means.

- Thank you so much for being on A House For Arts.

It was so great to have you.

please welcome Ali Sifflet.

- First of all, I just want to say thank you so much to WMHT, AHA.

I am so excited to be here to perform for you my original music.

I must introduce my friend and amazingly talented musician here, Liam Davis, who is accompanying me today on piano.

So first I'm going to start with my song, "Try", which was written a few years ago.

And really is just a motivational song for me.

Anytime I'm feeling down and I needed a pick me up and to remind myself that just trying sometimes is enough.

So here's "Try".

(soft piano music) ♪ Try, oh, try ♪ ♪ That's what they say ♪ ♪ Hey God ♪ ♪ Much fight ♪ ♪ Oh but I'll try ♪ ♪ 'Cause my heart is low ♪ ♪ And these aching bones keep telling me ♪ ♪ To let it go ♪ ♪ But if it takes all of my mind ♪ ♪ I'm gonna try ♪ ♪ I'm gonna try ♪ ♪ Been lonely days ♪ ♪ Been alone few years ♪ ♪ And its taken the ale from me many times ♪ ♪ Oh, but by the grace of his might I am ♪ ♪ I'm picking up my feet ♪ ♪ I'm picking up my dreams ♪ ♪ Oh, letting go things that aint for me ♪ ♪ I'm finding my stride ♪ ♪ And I'm finding my pride ♪ ♪ And its given me reason to try ♪ ♪ Try ♪ ♪ Oh, try ♪ ♪ Oh, that's what they say ♪ ♪ Oh, I aint got much fight ♪ ♪ But I'll try ♪ ♪ 'Cause my heart is low ♪ ♪ And these aching bones keep telling me to let it go ♪ ♪ But if it takes all of my mind ♪ ♪ I'm gonna try ♪ ♪ I'm gonna try ♪ ♪ I'm gonna try ♪ ♪ I'm gonna try ♪ ♪ Carry my feet lord ♪ ♪ Carry my feet lord ♪ ♪ Cover my dreams lord ♪ ♪ Oh cover oh cover my dreams lord ♪ ♪ In you I see ♪ ♪ I see I see ♪ ♪ The path that's in front of me ♪ ♪ Its in front of me ♪ ♪ Carry my feet lord ♪ ♪ oh carry my feet lord ♪ ♪ Cover my dreams lord ♪ ♪ Oh, cover ♪ ♪ Oh, cover my dreams ♪ ♪ In you I see ♪ ♪ I see, I see ♪ ♪ The path that's in front of me ♪ ♪ Oh carry my feet ♪ ♪ Oh cover my dreams ♪ ♪ In you I see ♪ ♪ Oh, carry my feet ♪ ♪ Oh cover my dreams ♪ ♪ In you I see ♪ ♪ Where I need to be ♪ (upbeat music) - Thanks for joining us.

For more arts visit wmht.org/aha.

And be sure to connect with WMHT on social.

I'm Laura Ayad.

Thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Funding for AHA has been provided by your contribution and by contributions to the WMHT Venture Fund.

Contributors include The Leo Cox Beach Philanthropic Foundation, Chad and Karen El Palka, Robert and Doris Fischer Malesardi.

The Alexander and Marjorie Hover Foundation and The Robison Family Foundation.

- At M & T Bank we understand that the vitality of our communities is crucial to our continued success.

That's why we take an active role in our community.

M & T bank is pleased to support WMHT programming that highlights the arts and we invite you to do the same.