September is gala month, when orchestras and other musical groups kick‑start their seasons. The most spectacular gala of them all is, unsurprisingly, the Phoenix Symphony’s, which this year features superstar flutist (it’s only “flautist” if you are nit‑picky or pretentious) Sir James Galway playing ¼ well, the flute.

A gala is by definition a concert where you don’t really care what music is being performed, provided someone very famous is playing it. Thus, the Symphony’s publicity doesn’t tell us just what compositions Sir James will be executing. He will, however, be joined by another flutist, a certain Lady Jeanne Galway, so one assumes there will be at least some duo‑fluting going on.

Sir James and his Lady perform with the Symphony this Saturday, Sept. 9, at 8 p.m. at Symphony Hall in downtown Phoenix. Tickets are $30 to $100. The non‑gala season–the real thing, where it matters which music is being performed–begins for the Symphony the following week, when music director Michael Christie leads a concert featuring Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, the “Eroica,” and the Symphony No. 2 of living American composer Christopher Rouse. For information on all Phoenix Symphony events, call (602) 495‑1117 or go to www.phoenixsymphony.org.

Another orchestra in the Valley opens its season with a concert in which both performer and the work performed are important. Pianist Andre Watts will perform Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, the “Emperor,” with the Symphony Orchestra of Arizona State University starting at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 20, at Gammage Auditorium in Tempe. Tickets are $15 to $45; call (480) 965‑3434.

Watts has been at the forefront of American music since he was discovered at age 16 by no less a musical light than Leonard Bernstein. Born 60 years ago the son of an African‑American GI and a Hungarian piano teacher, Watts retains an energetic youthfulness that belies his years of experience and his musical maturity.

“Music,” Watts said in a recent phone interview, summarizing the art he serves, “can remind you that there is something greater than hate and fear.”

He’s talking about the hate and fear that invest our current national and international scene, but he’s also talking about day‑to‑day life, including his own. There was the time, for example, a parking garage attendant for a major venue on the East Coast wouldn’t let Watts, who had arrived to play a concert, park his car in the garage because Watts didn’t have the right parking sticker.

Nothing Watts could do served to convince the stubborn and abusive attendant that he was there for a concert that was to start shortly, and that all the people with the right parking stickers were about to be sorely disappointed if the pianist with the wrong one was not permitted to park.

Only one thing got Watts through the experience:

“I thought of the Beethoven concerto I was about to play, which was all about finding a calm center in the midst of turmoil.”

At the very last minute, a supervisor okayed Watts to park, and the story had a happy ending.

If music can “soothe the savage breast,” as William Congreve’s oft misquoted adage goes, then perhaps it can serve as a balm for daily lives overflowing with frustrations of the parking garage sort. And who knows? Maybe it can do something about the mess the world is in, as well. Of course, it’s also necessary for the people who cause all the frustrations to wake up, or as Watts added, apropos both the parking incident and the global scene:

“We need to train people to understand that power is a responsibility, not a license to abuse.”

While the Beethoven Watts has scheduled to play Sept. 20 isn’t the one he leaned on during the garage debacle, the “Emperor” still has a lot to say, if you listen carefully.

“I think listeners will be swept away the beauty of Beethoven’s logic,” Watts says.

“As in so much of Beethoven, it’s not really full of tunes, but of motifs. It’s constructed in a foursquare fashion. Yet there’s a kind of ecstasy about that, which is the genius of Beethoven. How can four bars after four bars after four bars be so exciting? Somehow, Beethoven makes it so.”

The concerto also has a “gruff, boisterous good humor” in the last movement.

Like calmness in the face of calamity, humor’s another commodity we could use in endless supply.