Even in the depths of recession, the music business would appear to be demonstrating a surprising resilience. Who - or rather what - says? Julian Morgenstern's computer says. The founder/managing director of Morgensterns has a touching fondness for the happy histograms which his database flashes up with apparently breathless frequency. They are invariably front-page news in his glossy newsletters, and one of them - comparing the average number of phone inquiries per client for the same three month period in 1990, 1991 and 1992 - suggests bookings are holding up quite well. Or maybe Morgensterns is fighting off the competition in increasingly successful fashion. But there again modesty would surely forbid Morgenstern himself to make such a claim.

Please visit our performance graphs page for information about orchestras booking through Morgensterns

Over 330 freelance orchestral musicians freelance orchestral musicians now place the handling of inquiries for their services in the hands of Morgensterns - handily placed in north London. Each pays £75 + VAT per quarter to tap into the office's expertise, built up over the past ten years. As with a concert agency for solo performers, Morgensterns holds clients' diaries so as to give orchestral fixers the swiftest response to inquiries, although it is company practice to leave the final decision over whether to accept proffered work with the musicians themselves. The comparison with a regular concert agency does not end there. Morgensterns reckons actively to sell the musicians on its list rather than just mopping up direct offers of work. Which is where the computer comes in again. 'We have systems to monitor the work our clients are doing,' says Morgenstern, 'so that when an orchestra fixer calls needing suggested names, we can instantly give a profile of an unfamiliar musician - we just reel the information off from the database.

'We like to see ourselves as very active on both the client's and fixer's behalf. We have a system for monitoring the critical nature of any message for a musician about work. The computer prompts us when a decision needs urgently to be made so that we can either chase up the musician concerned or talk again to the fixer"."

The newsletter makes a feature of cartoons, often based on case examples, demonstrating the lengths to which Morgensterns will apparently go to contact musicians about dates, contacting clients both at home and abroad.

Morgenstern has a hatful of anecdotes about success stories.

Morgenstern has a staff of three, one of whom is part-time, but this was not always so. A graduate of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, he went to work at the Royal Festival Hall, where he was responsible for persuading the management to start the now very successful Foyer Music Series. He set up in business on his own after the abolition of the Greater London Council left him without his Foyer Music fixing job. 'The first four years were like a prison sentence. I worked from a bedroom in my parents' home where is was just me and four phones.

Being available all day, seven days a week was, and is, the key to providing the service required, so I would never dare to creep out and do my shopping until the dead of night - the 7-11 stores were absolutely essential to me! The good thing about having to sit there by the phones was that I had plenty of time to study how computers work and how to set up the database which is now so much a part of the service.

'Getting started certainly was an endurance test. This type of service hasn't experienced a substantial growth in competition over the last few years because of that: a number of new firms have emerged but then disappeared. One of the strengths of a diary service must be the range of contacts it has, but building those takes time. And it takes time for people to become absolutely confident in your ability to manage their diaries. The important thing is that all of us in the office are musicians. We understand how offers look from the players' point of view - that decisions about what work to accept are not always clear-cut. They may want to work on a particular date because a number of their friends are doing it. Or they may choose to play with a new orchestra to make a contact rather than, say, accept a particular date with another more familiar band. So the factors vary and we have to respect that.'

There is a faint air of restlessness about Morgenstern that suggests half his mind is forever under the bonnet, tinkering away trying to improve speed in the straight. And as with Nigel Mansell's roar to success this year, computer monitoring of the minutiae of performance seems to be one of the key elements. Hence the love-affair with the histogram. These are even used to give precise details on how long it is taking staff to answer the phone - and how long to put it down again.'

And as you might expect, Morgenstern's mind has already drifted to sideline activities. Over the last two years the office has been developing its own function booking agency, Lively Sounds, providing music for parties, business lunches, weddings and the like. 'It's all part of our concern to promote the interests of the musicians on our list. We're not a nameless voice at the end of the phone, we want to build up relationships with our clients. In a small business like this, you lose contact with your clients and lower standards at your peril.'

Andrew Green

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