Brendan Kavanagh

Brendan Kavanagh (born 1967 in London), also known as "Dr K", is a contemporary British pianist and piano teacher of Irish descent, with over one million subscribers on YouTube. He specializes in playing and promoting the boogie woogie genre, almost exclusively improvised, often combined with classical, jazz, blues, rock & roll, and traditional Irish music themes. He regularly performs in open venues on public pianos, sometimes in duet formats with musically inclined passersby or friends. He also plays the piano accordion, with emphasis on traditional Irish tunes.

Kavanagh graduated from Middlesex University with first class single honours BA in English. He then obtained his MA in Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama at University College Dublin, followed by a PhD from University College Cork (UCC) focusing on English poetry, with a dissertation titled "W.B. Yeats and Eastern Mysticism." He also obtained his Higher Diploma in Education (teacher training qualification) at UCC, alongside his PhD.

He started taking piano lessons at age seven on an old abandoned piano his father found. In his late teens he became strongly influenced by William "Hammy" Howell, a well-known British piano and keyboard player who played for the then popular doo-wop band Darts. Despite experiencing serious health problems at the time, Howell came to then seventeen-year-old Kavanagh's home and gave him three free piano lessons with focus on Howell's boogie woogie style. The lessons began with the "Hammy's Boogie" riff, which is a frequent component of the genre today. Kavanagh later transcribed Howell's lessons into sheet music, from which he created his own "Badass Boogie" set of lessons, along with recorded online performances, to allow others to learn the style.

Despite his strong interest in the boogie woogie style, he continued pursuing classical piano, eventually studying under international concert pianist and professor Nelly Ben-Or, completing his Grade 8 practical and theory requirements. Kavanagh today considers professor Ben-Or, who was very receptive to his improvisational boogie-woogie tendencies, as his classical mentor, alongside Hammy Howell as his boogie-woogie mentor.

In his late teens, Kavanagh played keyboard (with some vocals) for numerous Country and Irish bands around the pubs of north London. He credits this early exposure to rowdy pub crowds with helping him cope with the often unpredictable situations he encounters today in open public piano appearances.

After completing his academic studies Kavanagh taught English and Latin at secondary school, but became quickly disillusioned with the British educational system. He left the profession after publishing a book about his views, titled Toxic Teaching: How Ofsted, targets and student behaviour have turned a great profession into a nightmare.

In 2007, Kavanagh founded Dr. K Media Limited, a “multi-platform, interactive boogie, blues, and rock n roll piano coaching and consultancy internet service” business, and changed his focus to online teaching, selling, performing and promoting piano music, with a strong emphasis on the boogie woogie style. With the advent ofsmartphones which allow virtually anyone to easily capture and widely disseminate musical performances, he began performing in open public venues. Nowadays, he performs as Dr. K, often wearing his signature dark hoodie and shades, or sometimes wearing a workman uniform, playing incognito in front of often astonished passersby on public pianos at train stations, airports and other open public venues, mostly around London. His impromptu performances, often weaving together classical, boogie woogie, Irish and popular themes, are captured and uploaded to his YouTube channel, where he has amassed over 1 million subscribers. He also broadcasts some of his performances directly, via live streaming.

• Toxic Teaching, by Dr K, April 25, 2014
• The Badass Boogie Bundles, Dr K Media Ltd, June 11, 2014