For years, the wooded bowl in the hills above Orinda meant one thing every summer: actors in Elizabethan dress, a picnic blanket, and a show that ended by nine. California Shakespeare Theater closed in 2024 after years of financial strain, a closure that held even after Oakland native Zendaya, who had childhood ties to the company, gave $100,000 to try to save it. The stage sat dark through what would have been two summer seasons.
It is not dark anymore. The site reopened in June 2026 under a new name, Siesta Valley Bowl, and a new fifteen-year lease with the East Bay Municipal Utility District, which owns the land. The theater company is gone. The amphitheater is not. What is playing there now, and how you are supposed to get to it, has changed more than most people who used to drive up for a Saturday matinee realize.
The Booking Has Nothing to Do With Shakespeare
Opening night was June 5, with Jonathan Richman, the former frontman of the Modern Lovers, on a stage that used to belong to a rotating theater company's summer season. Since then the calendar has run through jazz fusion bassist Stanley Clarke, Ukrainian folk quartet DakhaBrakha, ukulele soloist Jake Shimabukuro, New Orleans brass outfit Rebirth Brass Band with the Soul Rebels, and psych-rock trio Earthless. R&B singer Eric Benet played August 28.
The booking is handled by Blue Note Entertainment Group, with David Lefkowitz overseeing programming and Suman Chatterjee, previously general manager of the Masonic in San Francisco, running the venue day to day. Chatterjee put the intent plainly when the season was announced:
"We are excited to be delivering a broad range of musical styles and genres to the East Bay."
The nonprofit that used to run one theater company's summer slate, the Siesta Valley Foundation, now describes its mission as covering music, film, dance, education, and community events. That is a wider mandate than Cal Shakes ever carried, and the fall calendar backs it up. Here is what is still ahead as of this writing:
| Date | Act | Genre |
|---|---|---|
| Sept 12 | Beats Antique | Electronic and world fusion |
| Sept 19 | Jerry's Middle Finger | Rock |
| Sept 22 | Cécile McLorin Salvant | Jazz |
| Sept 26 | Al Di Meola | Jazz fusion, guitar |
| Oct 2 | Eli Young Band | Country |
| Oct 16 | Steep Canyon Rangers | Bluegrass |
| Oct 24 | Super Diamond | Neil Diamond tribute |
A jazz vocalist, a bluegrass band with a Grammy, a country act from Texas, and a Neil Diamond tribute band inside six weeks is not a niche booking strategy. It is a venue trying to be the East Bay's general-purpose outdoor stage rather than a single company's stage.
Two Numbers That Don't Match, and Why That Matters More Than You'd Think
The operators describe Siesta Valley Bowl as a 1,000-person outdoor amphitheater. The East Bay Municipal Utility District, which controls the land and issued the lease, lists its actual capacity at 540 seated or 750 standing. That gap is worth sitting with before you buy a ticket. Even a sold-out Tuesday show is smaller than the marketing copy suggests, which is good news if you like an intimate room and less good news if you assumed there would be plenty of parking because it's "only" a thousand-person venue. There is not.
The venue sits less than a mile east of the Caldecott Tunnel off Highway 24's Wilder exit, in unincorporated Contra Costa County. That stretch of road was never built to move theater-scale traffic in and out on a compressed schedule several nights a week, and it is still the only way in.
The Part the Old Cal Shakes Crowd Isn't Used To
Under Cal Shakes, driving up and parking was simply what you did. That default no longer holds. On-site parking is now sold separately through Ticketmaster for $30 a spot, and the venue's own site is upfront that lots open only two hours before showtime, with attendants directing you once you arrive. If Ticketmaster isn't selling parking for a given show, it's free that night, but you have to check the individual event listing to know which kind of night you're walking into.
The alternative is the shuttle from Orinda BART, and the venue and the ticket platforms don't fully agree on what it costs. Siesta Valley Bowl's own visitor page describes the BART shuttle as free for most performances, running roughly every ten minutes from doors open until the last guest is out. Ticketmaster's venue listing, by contrast, quotes a $10 round trip for guests who park at BART and shuttle in. The safest move is to check the specific show page before you leave the house rather than assume either number.
For a household in Orinda proper, that math changes the calculus of a weeknight show. Walking or biking to BART, riding one stop, and taking a ten-minute shuttle up the hill is now competitive with driving, paying $30 to park, and sitting in a canyon-road exit line with everyone else at 10:30 on a Tuesday.
A few other adjustments carry over from the venue's first season:
- It is a cashless venue. Bring a card, not cash.
- Outside chairs and stools are not allowed, though the venue sells blankets on site. New stadium seating arrived this spring and reviewers have described it as genuinely comfortable.
- Temperatures drop fast once the sun goes down, even on a warm Orinda afternoon. Bring a layer regardless of what the daytime forecast says.
- Pets are not permitted, though trained service animals are welcome.
The Foundation Is Trying to Be a Neighbor, Not Just a Venue
The venue's first real test of that broader community mandate came before most of the national acts arrived. On May 30, Siesta Valley Bowl held a launch show billed as a Spring Bash, headlined by Burning Down the House, a Bay Area Talking Heads tribute act, with The Wayhighs and Free Moment opening. A week later, on June 7, the site hosted a picnic marking a new partnership between Siesta Valley Bowl and the Friends of Orinda Nature Area. Siesta Valley Foundation chairman Campbell Foster introduced the collaboration, which is set to run science-based programming for youth citizen scientists on the grounds. Toris Jaeger, who spent forty years as the naturalist at Wagner Ranch Nature Area, was there for it.
That detail matters more than it might look like on paper. A venue that books Al Di Meola one week and a youth nature program the next is signaling it wants to be something Orinda keeps around, not a touring operation passing through a leased hillside. Whether that holds over a fifteen-year lease is a longer story than this season can tell, but the early moves point toward a genuine attempt at year-round local relevance rather than a summer-only novelty act.
What This Actually Means for a Friday Night
The old rhythm of a summer in Orinda included, somewhere on the calendar, a trip up to the amphitheater to see a play. That rhythm is gone, replaced by something with a longer season and a wider range, running from June into late October with genres that would have never shared a stage under the old model. The trade-off is that the habits built around the old venue, especially the assumption that you simply drive up and park, no longer match how the site actually operates.
If you live in Orinda and you're planning to catch Cécile McLorin Salvant on September 22 or Steep Canyon Rangers on October 16, check that specific show's parking listing before you go, and give the BART shuttle a real look. The hills haven't changed. What it costs to get up them has.
If you're weighing what a stronger downtown or a livelier cultural calendar means for property values in Lafayette, Moraga, or Orinda, that's a conversation the Mary Bonham Team is always glad to have. Let's Connect.
