Brendan Kavanagh, also known as “Dr. K,” is a contemporary British pianist and piano teacher from Ireland with over 1.5 million YouTube subscribers. Plays and promotes boogie-woogie, which is almost entirely improvised and is frequently combined with jazz, blues, rock and roll, and traditional Irish musical themes. He frequently performs in public spaces at public pianos, sometimes in four hands with bystanders or friends.
He also plays accordion, focusing on traditional Irish melodies. Brendan Kavanaugh founded Dr. K Media Limited, a multi-platform interactive piano education company in the boogie, blues, and rock and roll genres, in 2007. Since then, the company has shifted its focus to online training, sales, performance, and promotion of piano music, with a strong emphasis on boogie-woogie music.
Currently performing as Dr. K, often in his trademark dark hoodie and black glasses, sometimes in a worker’s, police, or security uniform, incognito to astonished bystanders at public pianos in train stations, airports, and other open public places, mostly in London.
Sometimes he plays pranks on people who are already playing the piano, pretending to be a beginner, asking where the middle C is on the keyboard, clumsily playing a couple of notes, and then masterfully improvising, resulting in a comic effect. He is also known for ignoring the question “what’s your name?” and instead responding with the question “do you know boogie-woogie?” resulting in bizarre memes.
