On Saturday, Oct. 11, music luminaries from across the state will congregate at Aladdin Theater to formally honor the Oregon Music Hall of Fame’s 2025 inductees.

The Oregon Music Hall of Fame's, or OMHOF's, volunteer board elects singers, instrumentalists, engineers, and other music industry professionals and contributors. OMHOF annually anoints an “Artist of the Year” and an “Album of the Year” in recognition of recent work. (Indie-rock mainstays The Decemberists captured "Artist of the Year" for 2025, while Blind Pilot’s In the Shadow of the Holy Mountain won "Album of the Year.")

Beyond its mission of preserving Oregon musical history, OMHOF promotes the future of Oregon music. It awards five graduating high school seniors scholarship money to go towards a college education in a music-focused discipline, with one specifically reserved for women. OMHOF’s website specifies that its “Women in Music” scholarship is to be awarded to a woman “regardless of their sex assigned at birth.”

Upon receiving her 2025 Hall of Fame call, Mary-Sue Tobin’s thoughts turned to her late mother—“She would have loved this”—and the community she continues building within Portland’s jazz scenes. Tobin, a 30-year resident of Portland who grew up in Eugene, is one of the busiest jazzists in town: She is the artist-in-residence at Montavilla Jazz, leads two bands, plays saxophone regularly in three others (recently linking up with Rachel Brashear), performs with artists including esperanza spalding and The Temptations, and advocates for jazz festivals in Portland. This, all on top of teaching saxophone, piano, clarinet, and flute.

“I would say [Portland’s jazz scenes are] thriving,” Tobin opines. “I’ve been here for a long time, working in the trenches. It used to be a lot more cliquish. Now more people are going in between spaces. The young jazz scene is booming and booming. You can go hear amazing jazz on any night of the week.”

Tobin is one of two women inducted into the 2025 class, the other being Zoe Manville. Manville is to be enshrined as part of the band Portugal. The Man. The Portland-based alt-pop stalwarts won a 2018 Grammy Award for “Best Pop Duo/Group Performance” for their supernova single “Feel it Still,” which ascended to No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart amid a 45-week run.

Eugene doom metal band Yob and Beaverton electro-indie rockers Helio Sequence also attained OMHOF induction as groups.

Individual inductees include: Christian rock artist/producer Larry Norman; jazz drummer and University of Oregon educator Gary Hobbs; Portland-based singer-songwriter Casey Neill, who formed The Norway Rats with members of The Decemberists, Sleater-Kinney, and R.E.M.; bassist/vocalist Todd Jensen, who played with Alice Cooper and Ozzy Osbourne, and now performs with Journey; producer, engineer, and percussionist Tucker Martine, nominated for a 2007 “Best Engineered Album” Grammy for jazz collective Floratone’s eponymous album; and Jim Brunberg, musician and co-founder of Portland mainstay venues Mississippi Studios and Revolution Hall.

Community constantly occupies Brunberg’s mind, bleeding into his music. He released a folk record, Sherwood & Annie, on October 3 and is working on an opera, a “German[-language], rebellious tragicomedy about what’s happening to our social fabric.”

“The thing is to try to sneak hope here and there so it doesn’t feel fake and anthemic,” says Brumberg, who, as half of the multi-instrumental duo Wonderly, recorded the theme for The New York Times podcast The Daily. “I just try, in the face of whatever’s fraying in the tapestry of our civilization, to find flashlights here and there.”

Brunberg formed the Independent Venue Coalition in 2020 to advocate for local music venues amid the institutional disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, as showgoers socially distanced themselves. Five years later, Brumberg still searches for the light of the flashlights.

“I would hope that the Hall of Fame lets the government of Oregon know the economic and cultural impact [of music]. Every district has some sort of participation and cultural event. Southwest Broadway is an empty, lonely street when there’s not a concert going on.”

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Oregon Music Hall of Fame 2025 takes place October 11 at Aladdin Theater. Tickets and more info here.