There were no celestial trumpets blaring, no angels descending, when Markus Osterlund picked up the French horn for the first time six years ago.
Osterlund didn’t come from a musical family. His only previous musical experience was an abortive attempt at the piano when he was 6 years old. Assigned the instrument because he was one of the few in class who could coax a sound from the funnel-shaped mouthpiece, Osterlund struggled to use muscles he had never used before to try to play a jumble of lines and symbols he didn’t yet know how to read.
“There was a high learning curve,” Osterlund says, laughing. “But I always thought it was fun.”
While Osterlund’s initial wrestlings with the notoriously difficult instrument seemed to portend disaster rather than destiny, in the years since, the young man’s uncommon sense of fun has found him taking the stage at such venerated sites as Carnegie Hall, Royal Albert Hall and the Moscow Conservatory.
Osterlund, 17, grew up in Nuuanu and McCully. His mother, Lena, hails from Sweden and operates a physical therapy practice in Honolulu.
From his very first formal music lessons as a seventh-grader at ‘Iolani School, Osterlund marveled at the way individual components could be brought to harmony through music.
“The music we learned at first was pretty basic and corny, but listening to it all come together was always thrilling to me,” he says.
With guidance from band teacher Lynn Muramaru, Osterlund sought individual instruction from professional musicians and dedicated thousands of hours to mastering the posture, breathing and fine muscle control needed to play at the highest level. The approach is similar to how Osterlund approaches language study and tennis, at which he also excels.
Before his junior year, Osterlund attended a summer program at the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan.
The following year, Osterlund persuaded his mother to let him spend his final high school year in Interlochen’s boarding program.
This summer, Osterlund joined the National Youth Symphony on a tour of New York; Washington, D.C.; Moscow; St. Petersburg, Russia; and London. This fall, he is attending Rice University, which has produced some of the most successful French horn players in the world.
Next? Osterlund hopes to one day play fourth horn for the Oslo Philharmonic.
“I’m really lucky that my mother has supported my ambitions and my passion,” Osterlund says. “A lot of parents discourage their children from pursuing music, but she sacrificed to pay for my lessons and she’s always supported me.”
