Brendan Kavanagh (born October 1967[2][3]), also known as "Dr K" due to his PhD in English, is a British pianist and piano teacher of Irish descent.

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 passers-by, friends or family.

[8] In the late 1980s, Kavanagh studied classical piano with professor Nelly Ben-Or MBE,[9] who helped him complete his Grade 8 theory and practical requirements.

[10]: 01:28  His boogie-woogie mentor is London pianist Hammy Howell (d. 1999) who gave a young Kavanagh three free music lessons to encourage his enthusiasm.

[10] In 2007, Kavanagh founded Dr K Media Limited, moving his focus towards online teaching, selling, performing and promoting piano music, with a strong emphasis on the boogie-woogie style.

His impromptu performances weave together popular classical, boogie-woogie, Irish themes and are captured and uploaded to his Facebook page[11] (with 500 thousand followers) and to his YouTube channel, where he has over 2.49 million subscribers.

[1][12] In December 2023 he was interviewed on TalkTV for The James Whale Show[6][13] and claims to have earned a seven-figure sum that year, from his streaming activities.

[14][5][15] On 19 January 2024, Dr K uploaded to his YouTube channel a copy of his live stream, which was filmed at an upright piano donated by Elton John on the concourse at St Pancras railway station.