BOSTON (AP) – Boston Pops conductor Keith Lockhart says he had no doubt James Levine, music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra who is set to return to performing this week, would bounce back from shoulder surgery.

“He’s a very determined man. I wouldn’t bet against him,” Lockhart said of Levine, who also is music director of the Metropolitan Opera.

Levine tore his right rotator cuff when he fell leaving the stage at Boston’s Symphony Hall on March 1. He returns to the podium on July 7, when he opens the BSO’s Tanglewood season conducting Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 1 – the same program he led the night he got hurt.

“Every conductor can sympathize with rotator cuff issues,” Lockhart said Tuesday before the Pops’ annual Fourth of July concert on the Charles River Esplanade. “I’m really happy that he’s taken the time off. It’s really exciting that he’s back with us.”

Levine said last week that he lost 35 pounds following surgery, and has worked to improve his health.

Levine, who turned 63 last month, was forced to cancel a U.S. tour with the BSO, four operas at the Met, a gala honoring outgoing Met general manager Joseph Volpe and the Met’s June tour of Japan.

He has had health problems in recent years – sciatica that has led him to conduct from a chair and a tremor in his left arm that became noticeable in the 1990s but has lessened.

When taking curtain calls after performances, his face has been red and filled with perspiration.