STEPHEN LEWIS looks forward to another spectacular festival of light and sound as Illuminating York returns.

PREPARE to be bowled over. At 7pm on Wednesday October 27, the switches will be tripped on what could prove to be one of York’s most spectacular light shows ever.

Throughout the evening, a ten-minute revolving montage of colourful imagery will be beamed on to York Minster’s South Transept. The images themselves have been adapted from illuminated manuscripts held at the Minster, and from the cathedral’s stunning expanse of medieval stained glass. They will be accompanied by a soundtrack of poetry and music – the poetry recorded in the Minster and recited by local volunteers, the music an extract from the recording of Magnificat Septimi Toni sung by the York Minster Choir.

The show, known simply as Rose – in honour of the Rose Window, which will be at its heart – will run for four successive evenings, Wednesday to Saturday, from 7pm-10pm.

It is the centrepiece of this year’s Illuminating York Festival. And if you want to get an idea of how stunning it is likely to be, just cast your mind back a couple of years to the 2008 Festival. The artists behind Rose – Ross Ashton and Karen Monid – are the same ones who were responsible then for lighting up the ruins of St Mary’s Abbey in a dazzling light spectacular.

That show was known simply as Accendo. “If you saw the Abbey of St Mary’s … well, that’s the look we’ll be going for,” says Ross.

The artist was in York recently to seek inspiration for Rose. He visited the York Minster library to study illuminated manuscripts, and then took a tour of the York Glaziers’ workshop nearby, to study some of the stained glass from the East Window being lovingly restored there. Nick Teed, the Glaziers’ Trust’s senior conservator, also prepared a library of more than 200 images for him to study – all detailed close-up photographs of some of the Minster’s most beautiful stained glass.

The idea of the light show, Ross says, will be to take images from inside the Minster – and from its collections – and project them on to the Minster’s outside.

They will, according to the notes for the show, be “montaged and restructured to fit exactly on to the medieval architecture.”

Naturally enough, given that the show will centre on the Rose Window, many of the images will take the form of roses. The rose is a wonderfully potent symbol, Ross says. “It’s a metaphor for the Virgin Mary; it’s a metaphor for perfection, and for perfect love, and for the human body. And the Rose Window itself celebrates the merging of the houses of York and Lancaster at the end of the Wars of the Roses.”

Rose the lightshow, then, promises to be a treat. But it is only one of a number of events taking part across the city for this year’s festival.

Dean’s Park, on the other side of the Minster from the Rose Window, will itself be turned into a wonderland of light and music, thanks to a number of smaller-scale light works. These will include:

* Chroma Van, a re-modelled caravan which will allow visitors to bathe in pure, coloured light.

* Lightweight, a giant sphere which will project images and sounds across 360 degrees.

This year’s festival will also include a full programme of fringe events taking placed around the city, including torchlit tours of well-known landmarks.

* The Ice Book – a pop-up ‘book’ made of sheets of paper and light that comes to life in front of the audience to tell the story of a princess luring a man into the woods to warm her heart of ice.

Gillian Cruddas, the chief executive of Visit York, says the annual festival is a “fantastic opportunity to showcase York’s innovative and creative edge, set against the backdrop of the city’s stunning architecture.” This year promises to be no exception.

* Illuminating York runs from Wednesday October 27 to Saturday October 30, between 7pm and 10pm each evening.

For full details visit illuminatingyork.org.uk, or telephone the Visit York Information Centre on 01904 550099.