Montpelier’s Pyralisk Gallery
By Jim Lowe
The Pyralisk is Montpelier’s counter-culture night spot that has become the establishment. The funky coffee house, art gallery and hangout for just about every kind of central Vermonter, is about to enter its sixth year. Set behind Main Street’s City Hall and fire station, taking up the entire first floor of the old post office, the Pyralisk has become a most unexpected success.
Created in 1989 by Montpelier artist Nicholas Hecht, along with pre-school teacher Diane Hulphers and a group of local arts people, the Pyralisk has become the capital city’s community arts and entertainment center, offering attractions ranging from punk to rick to bluegrass to avant-garde theater to opera, all the time gracing its walls with local art, fine to funky.
The audiences are just as eclectic as what's on stage. One night will find the likes of Montpelier Mayor Ann Cummings, State Senator William Doyle, of State Secretary of Human Services Con Higan (an inveterate bluegrass fan as well as performer) seated next to ex-hippies and artists; another night will have teens dancing right next to folks old enough to be their parents. (They are.)
One night a year, the Legislature takes over the Pyralisk to present its own homegrown cabaret (public invited) on, appropriately enough, April 1: April Fools Day.
The Pyralisk, begun as what many thought was an anti establishment statement, has, in fact, become the local establishment…without changing its style a but, Besides more than cordial relations with the city of Montpelier (the mayor, a craftsperson, and her husband, a painter, both have exhibited here,) the Pyralisk has hosted a multitude of civic benefits, including one that raised more than $2,000 for the Montpelier Flood Relief Fund several years ago.
Last year, some 140 concerts attracted over 18,000 patrons. The Pyralisk has been a regular home to the state’s burgeoning singer-songwriter movement. Regulars have included Rachel Bissez, Casey and Gagnon, Michael Hurley, Dana Robinson, Nick Thome (also an internationally acclaimed classical composer,) Brooks Williams and Diane Ziegler, among many.
Some of the state's most accomplished musical groups like Banjo Dan and the Mid-Nite Plowboys, Bob Yellin and the Joint Chiefs of Bluegrass, Cold Country Bluegrass, and the New Breman Town Musicians, as well as the Vermont Opera Theater, have found enthusiastic audiences at the Pyralisk.
The Pyralisk is also the area’s prime source for jazz, having introduced the Jazz Hooligans, No Walls Jazz, the So Called Jazz Sextet, San Francisco’s Micheal Vlatkovich Jazz Quartet, and more recently, David Kraus’ Some Sort of Angel and Jamie Masefield’s Mandolinquents.
Saturday night dances usually find the Pyralisk packed to the rafters, State of the art music is provided by a wide variety of the state’s most popular groups-like Chin Ho! D'Moja, Lambsbread, Mr.Dooley, Peg Tassey’s new Velvet Ovum Band, Panache, Slush, Uproot, and Montpelier’s sophisticated rock ensemble that began at the Pyralisk, Ken Sleep’s Naked. Theatre has included Burlongton’s Green Candle Theater (formerly Garage Theater) and theater Factory, Warren’s Phantom Theater, as well as actors peter Burns, James Michael Keene, Donny Osman and Dana Yeaton in various guises, as well as James Hogue’s “Cabaret Shakespeare.” The Pyralisk is used for art, dance and drumming classes. If any place offers something for everyone, it’s the Pyralisk.
At the heart of the Pyralisk’s success is Nicholas Hecht. The image of the painter of the surreal and macabre belies a soft-spoken gentleman who can bring together the most disparate groups, He is a hero to the counter-culture while winning awards for the community service from the local establishment. For him, the Pyralisk is his living room, and the visitors are his guests.
All this happens on the barest of shoestring budgets: not much more than $23,000 a year. (For comparison, the annual budget of central Vermont’s other major presenter, the Onion River Arts Council, is about $200,000.) And about 84 percent of this comes from the gate.
The Pyralisk is not a nightclub: it charges admission rather than a cover, There is no income from food or alcohol, where most clubs earn their income, There is food but no profit. If you’re of age you can bring in your own alcoholic beverages (except for the alcohol free dances,) but the pyralisk gets nothing from this.
Out of this, some $12,000 goes to rent, In winter, heat runs $300 a month or more electricity is $80, and telephone is about $80 bringing it to $1,500 a month. But Dan Hecht, the pyralisk board’s president and Nicholas’ brother, insists it’s more like $1,750 with incidentals added.
The Pyralisk's entire payroll is $4,800, paying Nick Hecht less than $93 a week for a more than full time job.
Normally, performing artists receive 60 percent of the gate and must put up a meager $10 promotion fee. However, when there was too small an audience, Nick has been known to turn over the entire door to the artists.
Last January, it almost came to an end when the Pyralisk found itself in serious financial trouble. The board announced that if they could raise $5,000 within the month, the Pyralisk would close. Within days of its being announced in the local newspaper, the Times Argus, the deficit was repaid and the minor surplus begun.
Again, this year, finances have been tough, but things are picking up. “We have our giant fundraiser going on now,” Hechy explained, “The Vermont Council on the Arts helped us with a grant to put together this big fancy brochure.”
These days, rock groups are the big draw, Hecht said, and these are other acts that draw a big card, such as Mark Greenberg’s annual Woody Guthrie birthday celebration. “Serious jazz groups, new ones, have been enjoying quite respectable audiences, like Jamie Masefield and David Kraus. These are musicians who take their work very seriously, and they’re drawing people,” he said.
“I’d get very worried if the only people that were going to things were adolescents-who like to flick places- but that’s not the case,” Hecht said.
Surprisingly, the teen dances have caused very few problems at the Pyralisk, “It’s been amazingly good, considering you’re getting together a very colaile group…amazingly good,” Hecht said, adding that the police station is right across the way. Hecht, himself, is looking forward to an experimental theater project that includes a workshop and a new tap dancing group formed by Karen Gerdel. Another workshop with Lost Nation Theater actor Micael Keene is in the works, as well, Hecht said. There are big changes going on around the Pyralisk, he said. First in Fitness, a local health and fitness club, will be building a new center in the parking lot behind city hall and St. Augustine’s Catholic Church. A new street will soon run from Main Street to State Street via Harry Sheridan Avenue-right in front of the Pyralisk.
The Pyralisk just received its 501(c)3 status from Internal Revenue Service, making donations tax deductible, “We were waiting for that to launch any kind of big process to build the building,” Hecht explained.
“We have-and I don’t want to name any names- some people who will out up some or all of the down payment at this time.
The Pyralisk offers annual memberships for $30 (or more if possible,) which includes the monthly calendar by mail. For more information write or call: The Pyralisk Arts Center, Inc., P.O. Box 1071, Montpelier, VT 05601. (802) 229-2337.
Jim Lowe is arts editor for The Times Argus, in Barre and Montpelier.