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SPEAKER: You and your sister were kind of inseparable during that period.

MARY WEST: That's right. We decided that instead of going our separate ways as musicians, we would team up and play concerts for two violins and piano. And we played for two violins and harp for a while with a very, very talented young harpist from Curtis Institute. And that was the time when we got a chance to play at the White House.

SPEAKER: Well, that's exactly what I wanted to ask you about. In 1933, you performed at the White House for Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.

MARY WEST: That was a wonderful experience.

SPEAKER: Tell me about it.

MARY WEST: They were charming. They were wonderful to us, yeah. My sister and-- this little harpist was very, very beautiful. Lois Bannerman was her name. And we played classical music for them. But we did play--

SPEAKER: Why were you invited again?

MARY WEST: Well, my sister and I played at the Todhunter School for-- and we didn't realize it, but Mrs. Roosevelt was a teacher. She was teaching at this-- this is a private school in New York. And we played there, and she was in the audience.

And my sister, who had a lot more courage than I did, went right up to her and spoke to her. And she said, oh, I enjoyed your playing so much. And so my sister said, well, we certainly would love to play at the White House. [CHUCKLES] And she said, well, you'll have to go through the regular channels.

And as a manager, Mr. Younger-- and we'd have to audition in the Steinway building for this gentleman. And there were a lot of people auditioning at the time. But fortunately, we got the invitation. It was called a command performance, and it was fun. We had a wonderful time.

SPEAKER: Were Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt an attentive audience?

MARY WEST: They certainly were. And they were sitting right on the front row.

SPEAKER: Were you nervous?

MARY WEST: No, not particularly. They were so friendly. Everybody was wonderful. And after the concert, they invited us for a little supper in the small dining room. And they had these little-- they had-- the silver had "President's House" on it. There was an aide, a young aide, standing behind us all the time, watching us, and we didn't take the silver. [CHUCKLES]

SPEAKER: Well, I understand that Mrs. Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, arranged for you to have dates at the supper.

MARY WEST: Yes, that's right. Yeah. And we danced afterwards to the record player in those days. And we stayed until about 1 o'clock in the morning. And then the White House car drove us back to the Mayflower, where we were staying. My mother was with us, too, though. She went everywhere with us. In those days, we were a lot more protected than people are today.

SPEAKER: Can you remember what the conversation was like with the president of the United States?

MARY WEST: Yeah He asked, and I told him I was a twin. And he asked me if my sister was the twin. And I said, no, I have a twin brother. [CHUCKLES] I remember that.

And he said he enjoyed the music. And Mrs. Roosevelt was very gracious. And she wrote us up in her column. She had a column that was called "My Day." That's a long time ago. And she wrote us-- and we used that in our publicity. It helped us a lot.

SPEAKER: I bet it did. What a memory.

MARY WEST: Yeah, it was a great experience.

SPEAKER: So at that point, there was no doubt that you and your sister were going to be professional musicians. Where did that take you from that point?

MARY WEST: Well, my sister and I played many, many concerts. We're at the smaller circuit. We played a lot of preparatory schools, Taft, and we played many small colleges and lots of women's clubs. And what we had, we had about maybe 30, 60 concerts a year. So it was pretty good. The money wasn't a great deal, but we could live on it.

And then for a while, as I told you before, we played in a dance band and that was Horace Heidt's Musical Knights. And it was one of the big-- it was the big band era, and Tommy Dorsey and all those people around. And we really had to do that for the money because the money was really good. And we traveled 9 months with them, 9 or 10 months. We went out to the coast, played the Coconut Grove. And it was fun. It was a wonderful experience.

There were only three girls in the orchestra, my sister and myself and another violinist. And they had girl singers. But of course, in those days, they didn't have women in the orchestra proper. But we were featured. We had played a solo. Come out on the stage and played a solo all the time.

SPEAKER: You were pioneers.

MARY WEST: Yeah. That was fun. We really enjoyed it. Yeah.

SPEAKER: Did you have, either of you, any notion of auditioning for a symphony orchestra?

MARY WEST: My sister did, yeah. She played in Leopold Stokowski's Youth Orchestra. And she played-- after I got married, we had to separate, break up our team. And she played with the RCA Victor Orchestra. And she was a professional violinist in New York after I got married. And she was a freelance violinist, but she did very well.

SPEAKER: So you never had any symphony aspirations yourself?

MARY WEST: No, I didn't. No, not in those days. I got interested in teaching after I came to Minnesota. But before that, in the conservatory, I didn't even take a pedagogy class.

It was amazing that-- I really learned to teach from just observing certain teachers here in the Twin Cities, and reading a lot, and trying to analyze everybody's problems. And I think I was so anxious for my students to do well that I actually lay awake nights thinking about how I could correct their bow arm or their left hand position and trying to make up little gadgets or something to put a little-- if they had a bad hand position, sometimes, I would put a little spool between the thumb and the finger to keep this little opening that you're supposed to have.

SPEAKER: Do you think there's anything that distinguishes you as a teacher from other teachers?

MARY WEST: Well, I'm very ambitious. [CHUCKLES] I mean, I've always been ambitious to turn out the very best pupils. When I first started to teach, I would take the orchestra music-- the kids playing in the orchestra, and I would tell them that I want them to learn the orchestra music perfectly because they could become first chair. They could shine in their own school orchestra. And that gave them a little more incentive than to just play exercises and pieces, although I insisted on scales and exercises as a means to an end.

But I always included their school music. So eventually, practically all my students got to be first chairs because they practiced so hard on the orchestra music, and that caused-- the orchestra teacher appreciated that too.

SPEAKER: How did you get your students to practice so hard? Were you mean? Were you strict?

MARY WEST: I was just fussy about everything. I don't think I was mean. I just kept doing it, having them do it over and over again, and saying, now, I think maybe we could get this better if you tried this way. It's persistence, the persistence, especially about hand position and bowing, where you have to have your hand right, fingers right over the strings instead of curled up, like some of the kids do. And your bow hand has to be perfect. It's very, very hard skill.

SPEAKER: How do you recognize a prodigy?

MARY WEST: It's a very fine line. I know that certain prodigies-- I mean, I've had a couple of prodigies. I mean, there's Karen Lee, who was just fantastic. She's studying medicine now, but she was a marvelous prodigy. And her brother. Both of them were prodigies.

Well, she started when she was 3 years old. And you could just tell right away. I mean, she played-- she would learn a piece in no time. I mean, the whole Suzuki book-- I started her in the Suzuki method, and she just learned the whole book in less than-- about four or five weeks instead of a year. Karen Lee is one of the greatest prodigies. And then there was Miss America.

SPEAKER: That's right. One of your prized pupils--

MARY WEST: [INAUDIBLE]

SPEAKER: --Gretchen Carlson, Miss America.

MARY WEST: She was a prodigy. She was a prodigy, a real one. I mean, she was tremendous when she was little. And she made marvelous progress. She just chose a different career. And she's in television now. Yeah.

SPEAKER: Were you were you sad about that?

MARY WEST: Yes, I was sad. But now I'm happy for her. If she wants-- it was her choice. But, oh, I was disappointed because we both worked hard, and I could see her as a star, because I think that she could have been a great concert violinist.

SPEAKER: With so many students trained in the Suzuki method at the beginning these days, do you find that you have a lot of automatons coming your way who, the artistic ability hasn't been nourished enough, the interpretational ability?

MARY WEST: No. I think that the Suzuki method, it depends entirely on the individual teacher. The method is fine, but the method is only as good as the individual teacher. And there's fantastic teachers in the Twin Cities that teach the Suzuki method. And also, they employ a lot of the traditional methods too.

SPEAKER: Are young musicians getting better? Have they gotten better, improved over the years, the many years that you've been teaching?

MARY WEST: I think so. I think they're more talented today. They seem to come out of the bushes. Maybe that's because of the Suzuki method. There are so many more people playing, getting a start, and a good start. And then they verge off to another method sometime, or they just keep going to other teachers, and they get better all the time.

SPEAKER: Do you have any criticisms of the way we train our young musicians, or do you have any criticisms of musical education in this country?

MARY WEST: Well, the main problem, I think, that we all have is that the student is too-- they have too many interests, too many things besides their music. It's fine to be well-rounded. But if you're going to be a professional in any field, in tennis, golf, swimming, anything, you have to devote many hours a day to your field.

And I think, many times, the violin or the music lessons just come last. I mean, grades first, and then sports. And then they want to be in a play. And it's very, very difficult to have somebody focus on music, especially violin.

First of all, I think it's because they don't think they're going to make a great deal of money when they get out, even-- and they've put in a tremendous amount of work. It's a tremendous investment in time. And so it's not easy. But many people have told me that they've never regretted it. They've never regretted-- even though not making a fortune, they don't regret being a musician.

SPEAKER: Do we build our young musicians who are gifted up too much? Do we give them false hopes? There's only so many chairs out there to fill in an orchestra and lots more gifted musicians.

MARY WEST: That's what you hear all the time. I don't believe that. I realize that there's so-- it's hard to get a job in an orchestra or a position, but I really do think there's a place for these people, whether they get into an orchestra, or they play in a string quartet, or they teach. I mean, they have as many opportunities as any other field.

SPEAKER: What's the secret to your level of energy? I guess, you're blessed with a level of energy. But your longevity, you're 86 years old and you're teaching how many students a day still?

MARY WEST: I have about 30 altogether.

SPEAKER: 30 students.

MARY WEST: Yeah.

SPEAKER: It's mind blowing. What do you do to stay fit? What are your secrets, Mary West?

MARY WEST: Well, one of the biggest secret is my husband. He is such a wonderful person. He's always supported me in every way and in my music and my career. And he's just a joy. I think a happy marriage helps a lot.

Also, for exercise, I swim every day at the Bleasdale Y. And I get up and I'm in the pool by 6 o'clock in the morning, and I swim for about a half an hour, and enjoy that. I feel good when I get home. It gives you a-- you awaken. You feel good. So that's what I do for exercise. Yeah.

SPEAKER: Do you think you're going to continue teaching? There's just no stopping you. What's the point?

MARY WEST: I don't want to stop as long as I can be productive. That's the main thing. If I can turn out good students, I don't see why I should be limited, and enjoy it. The playing is another thing. I don't play as much now as I used to, but I still do practice some.