Wednesday, March 11. 7pm. Get your calendar. Mark it down. I’ll wait. Oh, and if you have something on for then, reschedule. This is sweeter. What it is is the broadcast premiere of A Company of Voices: Conspirare in Concert on KLRU. If you are already a fan of Conspirare, you don’t need me to explain why this is a significant event. But if you still haven’t heard Austin’s beloved – and increasingly world renowned – vocal ensemble and are wondering what all the fuss is with the multiple Grammy nominations two years in a row and widespread critical raves and invitations to perform at choral assemblies across the planet and what all, this program, which will be shown nationally on PBS, will make it clear to you. The members of this choir and its leader, Craig Hella Johnson, are vocal alchemists who can transmute any scrap of music into aural gold. Now, don’t let the word “choir” throw you. If you’re imagining a horde of black-robed figures belting out endless runs of 16th notes and unintelligible German text that was dusty and tired when Bach was in knee pants, think again.

We've never understood Austin's inability to sustain more than a handful of general interest used bookstores. We came of age in secondhand shops in North Carolina (well, and coffeehouse open mic poetry nights – thankfully those wannabe-Beat days are long, long behind us). There's nothing quite like the pleasure of trolling dusty stacks and picking up cheap reads that have already been lovingly dogeared, enscribed, underlined by countless others. Which is all to say that it's very exciting business indeed that the Austin Public Library's Recycled Reads Bookstore (5335 Burnet Rd.) will be open for business this weekend. According to APL, "Recycled Reads gives books a second chance and will be an active participant in the City’s Zero Waste Plan by ensuring obsolete materials are handled in an environmentally responsible way by keeping these materials out of landfills." The store's grand opening happens Saturday, Feb. 28 from noon to 4pm, featuring food, drink, and live music from the likes of Jon Dee Graham and Jesse Sublett. Not sold yet? There will be balloons. Go here to find out more, including the store's hours of operation.

Texas music chronicler Joe Nick Patoski will receive the 2009 TCU Texas Book Award for his biography Willie Nelson: An Epic Life. He'll be fêted at a March 19 dinner on the TCU campus, which will be open to the public (provided you pony up $30 for the pleasure of attending). Reservations can be made by calling Barbara Standlee (817/257-6109). Dan Oko chronicled Patoski in these pages back in April. You can also read an excerpt from his biography here.

Austin-based Latinitas, the first digital magazine for young Latinas, hits the streets in an unusual move in this digital age. Instead of going from print to digital, like most publications, they are expanding their online publication to a hands-on paper copy. The print version of Latinitas will be carried as an insert inside El Mundo Newspaper, the Hispanic Newspaper for Austin and Central Texas.

Artistic duo Samuel Boutruche and Benjamin Moreau, who go under the alias Kolkoz, have created a group of new works composed entirely of concentric frames. The gilded edge is the content. A craft project for Brandeis after they've sold off all their art? Hmmm?

No one likes to bitch - But no one likes to pay $10 for parking, either. I've been going to see musicals with my fabulous mother since I was five years old. If it has toured the country, chances are we've seen it. So both of us were excited when it was revealed that the Bass Concert Hall would finally be reopening with a wonderful 2009 season: Legally Blonde, Spamalot, Rent, Avenue Q and Wicked. Hot Damn! It was with great anticipation that we drove on Sunday to see Legally Blonde together. The musical? It was cute, energetic, and fine. Camp and class. But it was difficult to concentrate on the show, see, because everything else about the UTPAC experience was difficult and depressing.

If you're headed to a show at the newly refurbished Bass Concert Hall &ndash or the not-refurbished McCullough Theatre or Bates Recital Hall, for that matter &ndash be sure to pack an extra Hamilton for stashing your car. All that free parking that you used to be able to score in the large, typically empty lots by the LBJ Library and the School of Public Affairs are a thing of the past. The lots are now manned by attendants, and if you don't have a UT permit, you have to pay $10 to park there. $10. Thanks, UT. You really know how to show a little sympathy for the little guy when economic times are tough. Granted, folks who are shelling out $50, $60, $75 a ticket for premium concerts and Broadway touring shows at Bass can probably cough up an extra 10 bucks without choking (though not always). But what about the student or classical music lover of limited means just trying to get to a recital at Bates? They may end up paying as much or more to park as they do for the ticket, and that $10 may be a lot harder to spare. (A ten-spot can buy two weeks' worth of ramen.)

Heyd Fontenot's paintings are currently gracing the walls of Art Palace for a monographic show titled "Business in the Front, Party in the Back." Besides the clever title, a colloquialism for the common North-American mullet, the show is at once an adherence and a departure for Fontenot. The paintings on display are a continuation of the artist's charming, subversive, and breathtaking rendering of naked friends/family/acquaintances. They peer and pose, resolutely owning their mortal coil. The nudes are squat and compact, like a horde of exhibitionist gnomes, drafted with a few self-confident lines. This is especially true of Fontenot's works on paper, which are clean and precise. No fussy figuration here. I prefer cuddly. No one who poses for Fontenot looks bad, which I only assume means that the artist is sincerely and completely invested in each of his subjects at the moment of, perhaps, their greatest vulnerability.

I can make it to rehearsal on time. I rarely miss the start of a show. But when it comes to technology, I am forever running behind. Last guy on his block to get a cell phone. Still not plugged in to Facebook, much less Myspace. Still using a hand crank to start the ol' flivver. Thus, Arts becomes the last section of the Chronicle to join the blogging masses. Ah well, for those few of you who haven't yet abandoned these shores for the zippier, punchier isles of Twitter, we hope to offer more timely updates on what's happening through the performing arts, visual arts, and comedy scenes, including news items, commentary, and reviews of shows and events that we wouldn't necessarily get to cover in the print edition. And with that, the flivver is cranked up and hitting the road.