The former Cal Shakes amphitheater in Orinda has a new name and a new sound. Siesta Valley Bowl opens its first concert season with Jonathan Richman on Friday, June 5.
David Paul Morris/For the S.F. Chronicle
The former home of California Shakespeare Theater is reopening as an outdoor concert venue, marking a new chapter for a wooded amphitheater that long served as one of the Bay Area’s best-known summer arts destinations.
The site, now called Siesta Valley Bowl, is scheduled to begin its inaugural concert season Friday, June 5, with singer-songwriter Jonathan Richman, the former frontman of the Modern Lovers.
The opening comes after Cal Shakes shut down in 2024, citing severe financial problems despite a fundraising push that included a $100,000 donation from Oakland native Zendaya, who had childhood ties to the theater company.
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Formerly known as Bruns Amphitheater, the venue sits in the hills near Orinda, east of San Francisco. For decades, audiences came to the site for outdoor productions of Shakespeare and other plays, often picnicking before performances in the surrounding landscape.
The East Bay Municipal Utility District, which owns the property, approved a 15-year lease in November with the nonprofit Siesta Valley Foundation. The district said the agreement was intended to preserve the site for cultural programming, community use and watershed education.
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Siesta Valley Bowl’s season runs through October with a genre-spanning lineup that includes jazz and fusion acts the Breaks with the Headhunters, Stanley Clarke and Al Di Meola; vocal jazz star Cécile McLorin Salvant; world-music and global-fusion acts DakhaBrakha and Beats Antique; New Orleans brass and funk bands Rebirth Brass Band and the Soul Rebels; psychedelic rock band Earthless; ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro; bluegrass group Steep Canyon Rangers; and the Neil Diamond tribute act Super Diamond.
The new space’s operators have described Siesta Valley Bowl as a 1,000-person outdoor amphitheater. According to EBMUD, it has a capacity of 540 seated or 750 standing.
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Siesta Valley Bowl has partnered with Blue Note Entertainment Group for talent booking.
David Lefkowitz, the latter company’s senior vice president of talent, is overseeing programming, and Suman Chatterjee, former general manager of the Masonic in San Francisco, has been named general manager of the venue.
Siesta Valley Foundation has said it plans to broaden the site’s programming beyond theater to include music, film, dance, education and community events.
After Richman opens the series, the lineup includes a July 2 bill with the Breaks — Eddie Roberts, Stanton Moore and Robert Walter — and jazz-funk band the Headhunters; Ukrainian folk quartet DakhaBrakha on July 23; bassist and jazz fusion figure Stanley Clarke on July 25; ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro on Aug. 7; and a New Orleans brass band double bill with Rebirth Brass Band and the Soul Rebels on Aug. 8.
Later shows include psychedelic rock band Earthless with Primitive Ring on Aug. 21; electronic and world-fusion act Beats Antique on Sept. 12; Grateful Dead tribute band Jerry’s Middle Finger on Sept. 19; jazz vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant on Sept. 22; guitarist Al Di Meola on Sept. 26; bluegrass group Steep Canyon Rangers on Oct. 16; and Neil Diamond tribute band Super Diamond on Oct. 24.
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Cal Shakes had operated for roughly 50 years before closing. In 2024, then-Executive Director Clive Worsley said the company faced an “insurmountable financial impasse” after years of declining ticket sales, rising expenses and changes in arts funding.
Zendaya donated $100,000 to Cal Shakes through the Women Donors Network. The theater said at the time that the money would support its North Star Fund, which was intended to help with improvements and future productions. But the donation was not enough to keep the company open.
Her mother, Claire Stoermer, worked at Cal Shakes, and Zendaya spent time there as a child.