JILL COADY’S LIFE ONE BIG BAR OF MUSIC

Jill Coady seemed destined for music from birth. Her father, Merle Coady, owned and ran a music school that was a downtown landmark on 7th Avenue until October, when the soaring rents of redevelopment forced it to close.

“From Day 1, I literally grew up at the music school,” Coady said. “My baby carriage was given to me by the parents of children who studied at the school.”

Now principal flute with the San Diego Opera Orchestra, Coady traced her musical journey from learning to play the drums to getting her degree in flute performance at San Diego State University to running the Coady School of Music after her father’s death in January, 1985.

“My father started me on drums so that I would learn to count,” she said. “Every summer my brother and I would learn a new instrument in the music school’s beginning band class. After we learned some piano, then the choice of instrument was ours. My dad had a flute in the closet, and I kept saying, ‘Dad, I want to play this.’ ”

Apparently, the life of a free-lance musician was in her genes.

“I do what my dad did--he played everything from symphony to Starlight. I grew up with his going back and forth from one job to another. I never really chose music, I just did it. I started teaching flute at age 16, and all of a sudden people started paying me to play. “My father was my biggest supporter and said he would send me away to study at a conservatory. But by that time we were working together at the music school. If I had gone away, he would have not just lost a daughter, but a business partner.”

As a free-lancer, the 29-year-old flutist’s assignments run the gamut from visiting ballet company orchestras to the polka band at La Mesa’s annual Oktoberfest. She also plays road show musicals for the Playgoers Series, Baroque music with the Allegro Quartet, chamber music with a flute trio and woodwind quintet, as well as jazz duos with harpist Sheila Sterling and with guitarist Jim Owen.

“I also play the Ice Capades every year--by November I’m ready for a fun job. The orchestra is really a big jazz band with solo flute. They give me a microphone, and I have all these wonderful obbligatos.”

A few seasons back, the Ice Capades asked Coady to go on tour as a conductor, but her loyalty to the family music school made her turn it down.

Playing the road show musicals gives a free-lance musician a backstage view of the stars.

“Performers like Richard Harris and Yul Brynner will come over to the edge of the pit and actually chat with the musicians during a rehearsal,” Coady said.

But some have quirks the public seldom suspects.

“Robert Goulet makes up words to the songs as he goes along--every show is different with him. And Herschel Bernardi blew up and stopped a show because someone in the audience had a crying baby.”

Coady’s early professional experience gave her a critical perspective on the traditions of a university music department.

“The department stressed the wind ensemble as the ultimate performance group to be in but put little emphasis on the orchestra. I made the wind ensemble as a freshman and played in it for a couple of years, and everyone thought it was wonderful. But then it occurred to me that I’d never heard a wind ensemble outside a college campus.

“I knew I’d never have a chance to play in one again after college, so I spent the rest of my time in the orchestra. I knew from my father’s experience how important learning that literature would be for a musical career.”

A positive side of Coady’s SDSU tenure was meeting her future husband, Randy Smith, in a music theory class there. A saxophonist and clarinetist as well as a published composer, Smith eventually became a master clockmaker. Although he still does some composing on the side, he now spends most of his time restoring antique clocks.

“While he’s my best critic,” Coady said, “I’m glad he doesn’t make his living in music. One insane person in a couple is enough.”

Asked if a musical career induces insanity, she said, “Well, it makes you a little crazy because of the time demands and the politics.”

Coady noted that among the misapprehensions non-musicians have about a career in music is that because music is recreation for many, the profession is a lark.

“And they assume it’s very glamorous when they always see you leaving for a concert in your long black dress,” she said. “Even when I was growing up and dating, they didn’t understand that after a late evening’s performance, I had to get up the next morning to practice.

‘You mean you just can’t call in sick?’ my dates would ask. It’s good to be married to someone who understands.”