King's Lynn Festival will burst into life on Sunday when a group of the Fairey Brass Band musicians herald the start of the two-week feast of music and the arts with a fanfare in the Tuesday Market Place.

The musicians will perform a short fanfare on the new pedestrianised space in the market square – weather permitting – shortly after 6pm when the audience will be arriving for the 6.30pm opening concert of the 64th Lynn Festival.

The band's brass spectacular in the Corn Exchange will start with another fanfare – this time the world premiere of a piece specially commissioned to mark the cultural and artistic links between Lynn and the French town of Amiens.

The band will perform Burlesques, a short and lively work written by award-winning 35-year-old composer Karl Fiorini, a Maltese-born musician who now lines in Paris.

The Fairey Band was started in 1937 by a group of employees at the Fairey Aviation Works in Stockport, Cheshire. They have been British Open Band Champions 16 times.

After the opening fanfare the brass spectacular will include Sir William Walton's Prelude and Fugue - The Spitfire, and his stirring Crown Imperial performed at many significant occasions including the marriage of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. The programme will also include Nimrod from Elgar's Enigma Variations and Famous British Marches.

Earlier on Sunday the Festival service will be held at 11.30am in the Minster Church when the preacher will be Canon John Binns, vicar of Great St Mary's, Cambridge – the University Church.

Four of the 25 events in the packed two-week Festival programme have already sold out – including John Lill's piano recital, the Jubilee String Quartet concert at Park House, Sandringham, a town walk focusing on Georgian Lynn, and the final concert by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Several more events are very close to being sell-outs, including an illustrated talk by BBC Coast presenter, Nicolas Crane, a coffee concert by the pianist Richard Uttley, and London Tango Quintet with guitarist Craig Ogden.