Sydney Opera House gig a dream come true for Dr Gordi

The indie folk musician’s second album as Gordi was recorded at her parents’ sheep farm near the NSW town of Canowindra last year, when she was on annual leave from working as a doctor.

Singer-songwriter Gordi, aka Sophie Payten, who is releasing her second album Our Two Skins on June 26 2020. She will be performing a live-streamed concert at the Sydney Opera House on July 25. Picture: John Feder

When she was 15 years old, indie folk singer-songwriter Sophie Payten wrote down a dream in her journal: one day before she died, she’d love to perform at the Sydney­ Opera House.

Next month, she will tick off that item from her bucket list with one caveat: social distancing rules resulting from the spread of COVID-19 mean that the seats before­ her will be empty.

Instead, Payten and her four-piece band will perform inside the Joan Sutherland Theatre for a live-streamed concert on July 25 that will function as the inter­national launch for her second album. “I keep telling myself I could have filled it out, but it was taken away from me by being an audience-less show,” says Payten, 27, with a laugh. “I’m really hoping they’ll let my mum and dad in, but we’ll see. They could sit at opposite ends of the auditorium.”

When Payten released her debut album under the stage name of Gordi in 2017, she was about to sit for her final medical school exams — an extremely stressful time that led to a nervous breakdown which became the beginning of album No 2.

“If I could go back and speak to my younger self, I probably would have advised against it — but if I hadn’t done that, I may not have written this album the way I did,” she says.

Released on Friday, Our Two Skins was recorded at her parents’ sheep farm near the NSW town of Canowindra last year, when Payten­­ was on annual leave from working as a doctor at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney.

Among popular Australian musicians, Payten — whose ­newest work is currently feature album of the week on national youth broadcaster Triple J — is one of very few to hold a medical degree. Yet with large-scale concert­s on pause since March, it hasn’t been quite as easy to return to her former workplace either.

Although she splits her time between Sydney and Melbourne and is on call at hospitals in both cities, the low number of national coronavirus cases have meant th­at her skills haven’t been needed so far.

“I’m in a position where I’m stranded between these two career­s, and I can’t quite execute either,” she says.

“My medical unemployment is directly correlational to Australia’s success in fighting COVID. I presumed I’d be back in work by now — but good on Australia.”