The saxophone is the most ambiguous of instruments. Though ubiquitous in jazz and pop, it has long remained on the fringes of classical music, brought in for the occasional “Bolero,” but rarely afforded the spotlight. When it finds its way into the orchestra, it often functions as a jazzy outsider, an ambassador of pop.

Few contemporary composers are better poised to trade on the saxophone’s ambivalent status than John Adams, who long ago mastered the art of moving nimbly between the classical and pop worlds. Mr. Adams has toyed with the instrument ever since he introduced a saxophone quartet into his opera “Nixon in China” a quarter-century ago. And in recent years, Mr. Adams has rediscovered the saxophone and its midcentury jazz legacy, even as he has distanced himself from young composers who draw on the commercial music of their own era.

When the soloist Timothy McAllister and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra give the United States premiere of Mr. Adams’s Saxophone Concerto on Friday at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore, it will be an auspicious event for the large but often overlooked world of classical saxophonists. Those who miss the Baltimore performances can hear the concerto performed by Mr. McAllister and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in a live online broadcast on Oct. 5; Nonesuch will release a recording next spring.

This new work grew out of Mr. Adams’s lifelong love for the slippery sound of the sax, and also took inspiration from the virtuoso technique of Mr. McAllister, who is a professor at the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern, and, at 40, one of the foremost saxophonists of his generation.