DENVER - It’s like Old Home Week in Colorado this week, as a reported 3,500 arts administrators and others from assorted arts groups - the League of American Orchestras, Opera America, Chorus America, theater and dance groups and (oh, yes) the Music Critics Association of North America — gather at Denver’s convention center.

The occasion is the National Performing Arts Convention. When I arrived at the airport on Wednesday and offered my discount coupon for the shuttle, the clerk declined th actual piece of paper: “There are too many of you,” she said. “We’d be overwhelmed.”

Walking through the vendors’ area and later at a mass reception, I saw and was hailed by people I know from my past as a singer, and those I’ve worked with as a critic, in a very large arts reunion.

There are sessions for the whole convention, and individual sessions for the various groups. There are also performances in all disciplines.

Last night featured a performance by the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and Chorus at Boettcher Hall in the Denver Performing Arts Center. Boettcher is a horrible excuse for a concert hall: it’s in the round, and the acoustics — at least from where I sat, at the junction of House Left and Stage Right, right above the first violins and entirely too close to the percussion — are atrocious. (Architects should not be allowed in on hall design until the acousticians have done their basic work.)

This morning the Music Critics have a session on all aspects of blogging. The first rule, says Frank Oteri of NewMusicBox.org, is “keep it aphoristic,” short enough that people “will want to join in the conversation.” Noted.