The Dallas Bach Society will perform Bach’s St. John Passion, while the Dallas Symphony will perform his St. Matthew for the first time in 50 years. The one concert is church-ensemble small, the other’s symphonic-big. The one’s aiming for early-music authentic … and so’s the other one?

For the first time, the Theatre Communications Group’s national conference — the biggest nationwide gathering of non-profit theater professionals — is coming to Texas, to North Texas. We’ll teach ‘em what every artist learns here: how to do the fundraising two-step.

The DSO’s last record distribution deal ended in 2006. Since then, if you wanted a recording of the DSO with conductor van Zweden, you had a choice of two CDs on Amazon. That’s it. And no downloads. That’s going to change April 1.

Continuing our series on North Texas artists worth watching in the New Year. Adam Adolfo brought Latino theater back to Fort Worth’s Artes de la Rosa. And this year that Latino theater is going to include a goblin, surrealism and some Argentine flair.

#2 in our series, looking to people in North Texas arts worth keeping an eye on in 2012. Ben Fountain made a literary splash in 2006. This spring he’s back with his scathing, funny, debut novel. Young vets on a ‘victory tour’ for the Iraq War come to Texas Stadium — to meet Beyonce and the Cowboys on Thanksgiving.

The first in a series: At year’s end, Art&Seek looks forward to people in the North Texas arts community — some of the ones who’ll be doing work in 2012 that you’ll want to keep an eye out for. We start with the Dallas Museum of Art’s new director.

It involves some 200 area artists from groups such as the Turtle Creek Chorale, the Texas Ballet Theatre and the Dallas Theater Center. They had only four months to bring A Gathering together, but deciding what this gala benefit should say about 30 years of AIDS history was the hurdle.

At TEDxSMU, audio professor Scott Douglas will talk about how new software makes lip-synching old hat. Is this a wonderful new bag of tricks or another music biz gimmick? It may depend on what you see as the performer’s job.

What other gallery has some 6,700 works by area artists for sale — displayed in 1,001 rooms? What’s more, the Omni acts like an agent for the painters and photographers.

It’s the first survey of Mark Bradford’s meteoric career. In only 10 years, he’s had a solo show at the Whitney in New York and won the ‘genius’ grant. Bradford scavenges his LA neighborhood for scraps of paper — and turns them into archeological maps, abstract expressionist swirls, murals as ephemeral as newspapers, as corroded as Roman wall paintings.