Chuck Kirman / Star staff file photo Boris Brott, director of the New West Symphony, instructs Erik Teemer from Parkview School how to use a baton at a January arts event.

Boris Brott, conductor and music director of the local New West Symphony, is on a globe-trotting speaking tour this month in his other career as a motivational speaker.

Brott, a lawyer by training, trades the baton for a microphone to speak to Fortune 500 companies about 35 times a year, by his count.

"There's a connection between leading an orchestra and leading a business," Brott said during a phone interview Thursday from Montreal.

The New West Symphony is the resident orchestra of the Oxnard Performing Arts Center, the Countrywide Performing Arts Center at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza and Barnum Hall in Santa Monica.

To link the world of the symphony and the world of business, he cites what they have in common.

"Each must perform in harmony to achieve goals," he said. Also, he said, each strives for perfection and innovation. "I use music as a metaphor for teamwork, creativity and leadership."

On March 6, he was in Brazil for a speech on the subject of cultural diversity and working together. His audience was Latin America's beverage bottling giant FEMSA.

He was in New York City on March 10, speaking about the challenges of personal relationships in team building, for the human resources leadership at cosmetics firm L'Oreal.

Today, he is scheduled to be in Florida to deliver an address to Medical Imaging, a manufacturer of diagnostic imaging agents.

Over the past 20 years, motivational speaking "has become a major source of income in my life," Brott said. That path developed by serendipity when a friend asked him to write an educational presentation. Brott said he didn't want to be "just a talking head," so he incorporated music.

"Now it's become a tradition of mine, to bring the stage and orchestra together with business," he said. "I liken being a conductor to being a business CEO since we want to produce great harmony."

Brott's versatility is enhanced by the fact that he speaks five languages — English, French, Spanish, German and Italian — which, he says modestly, "is not many — there are others who speak many more."

Brott says he has not presented a motivational speech in Ventura County but did a leadership workshop for the Thousand Oaks-based Amgen in San Francisco, and also has spoken in the Los Angeles area.

He lives in Hamilton, Ontario, with his wife, Ardyth, an author and lawyer. They have three children.

He'll return to Ventura County to conduct performances of the "Mendelssohn Fourth Symphony" and "Brahms Violin Concerto" on April 4 in Oxnard and April 5 in Thousand Oaks. A third performance is scheduled April 6 in Santa Monica.