Gary Sheldon, former associate conductor and interim music director of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, is off to a strong start on the West Coast.

Sheldon, music director of the Lancaster Festival, last fall also became music director of the Marin Symphony Orchestra, a metropolitan orchestra near San Francisco.

Reviews of his first appearances on the podium were favorable. Robert Commanday of the San Francisco Chronicle commented:

“He’s an eminently clear conductor with a beat and touch that are encouraging yet undemonstrative. He works from memory, not mechanically but by heart, anticipating and governing the music. His mannerisms are limited to one, the Michael Tilson Thomas hop-kick that I had thought was patented.”