​Stunning lighting and a feast of music will bring Bath to life tonight.

The opening night of the Bath International Music Festival aims to provide the free party of the year.

It takes place in venues right across the city, features entertainment of all kinds and gets under way just before 6pm with the annual festival procession which this year celebrates the art of dance.

The children’s parade through the streets leads into the abbey for an epic performance by a 50-strong male voice choir and the Wells Cathedral School Brass Ensemble of Thomas Wood’s The Rainbow.

This commemoration of the Battle of Dunkirk receives its second-ever performance following the premiere at the Royal Albert Hall in 1951 and marks Dunkirk’s 70th anniversary.

Then throughout the evening there are choirs, quartets, big bands, Georgian bands, guitar bands, bass players, recorder groups street music and a variety of post-punk sounds. Venues range from the Assembly Rooms at one end of the city to The Forum at the other.

The entertainment - sponsored by jeweller Nicholas Wylde - ends with a celebratory fireworks display that bursts across the city’s skyline at 10pm.

Some of Bath’s most historic buildings will be bathed in exterior lighting to coincide with the Wylde Party in the City event as part of Bath and North East Somerset Council’s work to reduce its carbon footprint.

The authority has commissioned Enlightened Lighting to come up the LED light display to illuminate Bath Abbey, the Guildhall frontage on Orange Grove, Pulteney Bridge and Pulteney Weir, and the Colonnades.

The aim is to show that LED lighting can be even more effective than traditional illumination - but use far less energy.

Miles Barnes, project manager for the council, said: “We are showcasing what LED light can achieve in comparison to traditional and more energy-hungry floodlighting. The council hopes the public response will be encouraging to this new lighting because this may provide the opportunity to light buildings and structures more even more strikingly and very efficiently. A long-term LED lighting approach could result in a carbon emission reduction for our external lighting of up to 60 per cent.”

Councillor Charles Gerrish (Con, Keynsham North), cabinet member with responsibility for carbon reduction, said the authority wanted to reduce its own carbon footprint by 30 per cent by 2014.

“Innovative projects like this one that could be energy efficient in the long term are a key part of exploring how we can achieve this.”

Meanwhile, spoof historic plaques have appeared around the city centre as part of the complementary Bath Fringe Festival and its Fringe Arts activities.

They pay tribute to the mythical Jacob Von Hogflume and say the so-called inventor of time travel “lived here in 2189.”

For more information, visit www.bathmusicfest.org.uk, www.bathfringe.co.uk and www.fringeartsbath.co.uk.