Peter Oundjian is a multitasker. As music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, he conducts more than 100 concerts a year, leads all rehearsals and co-ordinates musical interpretations with anywhere from 60 to 120 people.

Then, beyond the baton, there’s planning the season’s programs, fundraising, hiring players to fill vacancies and fulfilling publicity obligations, reads an article in The Globe and Mail.

Born in Toronto in 1955 to an Armenian-British father and a British mother, Mr. Oundjian was brought up in England after the family moved back in 1960. He studied violin, attending London’s Royal College of Music and then the Juilliard School in New York, where he minored in conducting. After 14 years as first violinist of the Tokyo String Quartet, from 1981 to 1995, he turned to conducting after a strain injury. He has also been a professor at the Yale University School of Music since age 25.

Numerous guest spots worldwide launched him as a conductor. The Nieuw Sinfonietta (now the Amsterdam Sinfonietta) hired him as artistic director in 1998, and his appointment to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra followed in 2003.

“It’s very interesting when you go to guest-conduct another orchestra, because you probably don’t know anybody,” says Mr. Oundjian. “And the first thing you do is share a deeply personal experience, which is to interpret whatever it is – a Brahms or Beethoven symphony, or a piece by Stravinsky. It’s quite odd. You have to manoeuvre very skillfully.”

His strategy is not to focus on negative things but on what can be made positive. Such optimism goes a long way in life and a very long way in leadership, he says.