About Pradichaya Poonyarit

Note By Note with Pradichaya

Meet Pradichaya Poonyarit, a Thai-American opera singer, voice teacher, Thai-English interpreter, culinarian, and storyteller writing life note by note.

My name is Pradichaya Poonyarit.

I am a singer. A teacher. A Thai interpreter. A Thai culinarian. A storyteller.

And apparently, now I’m a blogger, too.

Although if you’ve read anything here, you may have already figured out that I don’t seem to know how to write about just one thing.

One moment, I may be thinking about why I became a Thai interpreter. Next, I’m back in Thailand, standing somewhere inside an old memory. Then I’m talking about singing. Food. My mother. My father. My students. My children. My husband. A dream I had decades ago. Something that happened yesterday. Or something I suddenly understand about myself now that I couldn’t possibly have understood then.

That is “Note By Note with Pradichaya.”

For most of my life, I have used my voice.

I trained as an opera singer and became a voice teacher. I have stood on stages, taught singers, worked with voices that needed more than another lesson, and spent years listening for what was really happening underneath the sound.

I use my voice as a Thai-English interpreter, helping people communicate through moments that may be confusing, frightening, important, or life-changing.

I use my voice when I teach Thai cooking—not simply to hand over recipes, but to preserve the way I know Thai food, the way I learned it, and the way I believe it deserves to be understood.

And somewhere along the way, I discovered something about myself:

I use my voice to console.

Through singing.

Through interpreting.

Through speaking and teaching.

And now, through writing.

Perhaps that is what this blog has been trying to tell me all along.

I was born and raised in Thailand. I came to the United States as a young woman and built a life here. I am Thai-American. I am a wife, a mother, a singer, a teacher, a business owner, and a woman who—at this point in her life—is still discovering that some dreams never actually left.

Some were simply waiting for me to catch up.

I have lived enough life to know that we do not become who we are in one grand moment.

We become ourselves note by note.

A memory here.

A loss there.

A decision we didn’t know would change everything.

A dream we buried.

A voice we almost stopped using.

A part of ourselves we suddenly recognize again.

That is why I write.

Not because I have everything figured out.

But because, finally, I am paying attention.