- January 9, 2026
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When musician Cynthia Jordan visited Siesta Key Beach for the first time after moving to Florida three years ago, she didn’t see waves like the ones she had surfed on growing up near the California coast.
What she did find was something she says was even more special: elegant rolling waves, turquoise waters, and powdery white quartz sand with a history in the Appalachian Mountains thousands of years ago.
Some people, she noted, call the island a vortex of magical energy, a description she says she agrees with.
For Jordan, the scene also became the inspiration to write a musical.
“The way I wrote ‘The Beach’ was, first of all, going to Siesta Key, and going, ‘Oh my gosh, this is amazing. I've never been to a beach like this, and I've been to beaches all over the country, but not like Siesta Key,” she said.
The Parrish musician hopes that once she brings a cast together, she can premiere the musical in the Sarasota area.
Currently, Jordan is seeking out actors and local theaters, and she has been receiving creative support that involves the musical's book from Broadway director Bruce Lumpkin.
Jordan grew up in the world of music and is part of the steering committee of the Sarasota Jazz Club.
However, she is best known for her song “Jose Cuervo,” which became a No. 1 Billboard country hit in 1983 and is about a woman who drank too much Jose Cuervo tequila the night before.
Country music artist Shelly West released the song as a single, and boosted her career — as well as the sales of Jose Cuervo tequila.
At the time Jordan was growing up in California during the '60s, the sound of music was basically “poetry plus The Beatles,” she says.
“Everybody's singing about love, and getting together and peace and all of this stuff, which is what we desperately need right now, so you see a revival of that kind of music happening,” she said.
That kind of musical environment, she says, helped inspire “The Beach," a musical about a suicidal man who ultimately overcomes his past challenges and discovers his authentic self while spending time in Siesta Key.
Jordan says although the island was her first inspiration for the musical, her second was all of the people that come from the north, including from New York, to the area.
“I thought, ‘Oh, I've got to put New York in this play, because people from New York come down here for the same reason. It's magical, right?” she said.
Charlie, a man in his 30s living in New York, who has hit rock bottom, is the musical's main character. His best friend and wife have betrayed him, stealing his money, business and apartment, while his grandmother has also just died.
However, the story begins even before that, when a spirit, Brave Soul, talks with the Master Life Planner and agrees to return to Earth for another human experience, with a reminder that life’s purpose is to “rediscover its divine power and light despite trials and pain.”
Jordan says the play's story and characters draw from her own experiences and from other people she has known, and that Charlie's experiences are inspired by events that have happened to her.
“I have been betrayed, yes. I have lost my grandmother, yes. I lost a lot of money, yes. I lost a best friend, yes,” Jordan said.
She also says the play will speak to the idea that "music is the language of emotion, and emotion is the mirror to the soul."
“We're divine beings having this human experience, and so when you discover that, and you realize that, then you can harness that power to create miracles in your life,” she said.
Near the beginning of the story, Charlie climbs to the top of a skyscraper prepared to jump, where Joy, the Master Life Planner in human form, rescues him and encourages him to go to the beach.
After traveling to Florida and arriving in Siesta Key, he meets a series of characters who share their own journeys amid their past struggles, in a story that is set primarily on the beach.
Those include Duke the Beachcomber, a musician and veteran; Maya, a woman of Native American descent who teaches Charlie about ancient spirituality; Father Iggy, a priest who was once an alcoholic, and Margarita, a senior woman who offers him shelter and support.
There is also a woman, Bliss, who turns out to be a crush from the third grade, expressing Jordan's belief that the events of life come together for a reason.
Along the way, are musical numbers like “Down on Siesta Key,” whose lyrics begin with, “I like drinking piña coladas down on Siesta Key.”
In another song are the words, "Oh yes, it's time, to get out of your mind."
“It's a song about how our minds get full of junk, and how to just sit at the beach and just get it all cleared out and just put nothing in your head, and just watch the waves, a nature’s meditation kind of thing,” Jordan said.
By the end of the story, through the people he has met and his experiences in nature, Charlie’s outlook on life transforms.
“What's interesting in my career is when I ask any human being, ‘What is the strongest energy in the universe?’ I've never heard anybody not say love,” Jordan said. “Everybody says Love.”
Jordan says due to Siesta Key being the setting of the story, it’s essential to her that the musical debut there, or in Sarasota. She is in talks with local theaters and likes to think of it premiering at the Historic Asolo Theater at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art.
“I love that theater, my gosh, and they take local playwrights, so that would be my dream,” she said.
Regardless of what venue she may find, however, she thinks it’s a story today’s world needs.
“People are looking for some kind of positive change… because everybody's understanding that things are in chaos, and this musical is all about tuning into our spirituality, which will absolutely change the world when we all come from a place of love, and understand that we have the power,” she said. “If enough of us understand that … the world will become totally peaceful, and totally in harmony, and harmony is music.”
