BARBRA, CELINE AND WHITNEY ALL RELY ON THE HIT MAN – Say you’re the mastermind behind dozens of hugely successful songs and your nickname is the Hit Man. You should know the secret to making a hit, right?

Not so, says songwriter and producer David Foster.

Foster – who has won 15 Grammy awards and boasts a client roster that includes Barbra Streisand, Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, Madonna and the late Michael Jackson – still can’t put his finger on what makes a smash.

“I do know that I always try to create a moment in every song where I can imagine – if the artist is doing it live – that the audience would break into applause,” Foster said from his home in Los Angeles. “The most obvious one would be when I did ‘I Will Always Love You’ for Whitney Houston. There’s that big moment at the end where the drum hits and it changes keys. Those kinds of moments, in a more subtle way, I try to put into every song. But I have no clue what’s a hit record. I mean, I don’t know.”

If Foster can’t articulate the magic formula, he can at least bring it with him. The man with the platinum touch is taking his parade of hits on the road for a tour that stops at Agganis Arena on Sunday.

The show is modeled after his PBS special, “David Foster and Friends,” the highest-pledged PBS show in history. In Boston, Foster will host and provide piano accompaniment to Peter Cetera, Philip Bailey, “American Idol” winner Ruben Studdard and finalist Michael Johns, and Oprah-approved, 18-year-old sensation Charice.

“I’ve been a behind-the-scenes person my whole life,” Foster said. “You sit in a room with no windows and you just pound this music out year after year. You send it out to the world and you don’t really know who you’re reaching. So this is a way of instant gratification. People sing along with your songs and you go, “Wow, that’s pretty cool.”

The show will also include the two winners of a talent search.

“I think ‘American Idol’ has (the talent search) cornered,” Foster said. “The rest of us are just sort of playing around compared to the way they’re doing it. But there is something natural about young singers thinking that they could have a chance to sing for somebody. I’m a person who’s in a position to really help them.”

At 59, the British Columbia-born Foster says his longevity in the industry stems from his willingness to adapt. Which he has: The No. 1 album on the current Billboard 200 is Michael Buble’s Foster-produced “Crazy Love.”

You may also like to read:

1. David Foster & Charice Live Boston Concert
2. Interviews: David Foster
3. PBS Interviews Charice and David Foster