John Adams’s Saxophone Concerto received its US premiere over the weekend, with Marin Alsop conducting the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and saxophonist Timothy McAllister, for whom the Concerto was written, at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore on Friday and Sunday and at the Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda on Saturday. The piece was given its world premiere at the Sydney Opera House with the composer leading the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in August.

The Baltimore Sun's Tim Smith says "the score deftly fuses classical and jazz elements to create a cohesive, arresting experience."

Smith goes on to say: "Adams, whose style has evolved over the decades from pristine minimalism to a kind of post-Mahler richness of thematic ideas and orchestral textures, has created here a kinetic, ecstatic ride that achieves giddy heights along the way. Having grown up in a jazz-filled home, the composer has a keen knack for using its idioms in a way that is as natural as it is expressive."

Read the complete review at baltimoresun.com.

The Washington Post's Anne Midgette, who describes Adams, in her concert review, as "arguably the orchestra world's leading living composer," calls the concerto "a virtuosic piece, designed to test the limits of the soloist for whom it was written." She goes on: "But rather than being merely driven, Adams also drew back and gave the music room to breathe, letting the runs subside into, for instance, a gentle, humid rocking in the orchestra while McAllister mused quasi-improvisationally above them." Read the complete review at washingtonpost.com.

Timothy McAllister will join the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and conductor David Robertson to perform the Saxophone Concerto at Powell Hall in St. Louis on October 5 and 6. Nonesuch will record the performances for future release with earlier SLSO performances of Adams's City Noir. Listeners around the world can also tune in to a live broadcast of the October 5 concert at stlpublicradio.org.