Brendan Kavanagh

Brendan Kavanagh (born October 1967), 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. He also plays the piano accordion, with emphasis on traditional Irish tunes.

Education

Kavanagh attended St Aloysius' College, in Highgate from 1978 onwards. He went on to study and then graduate 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 in English language and literature from University College Cork.

In the late 1980s, Kavanagh studied classical piano with professor Nelly Ben-Or MBE, who helped him complete his Grade 8 theory and practical requirements. He credits his success today as an improvisational classical/boogie-woogie pianist to her support and encouragement of his improvisational style. His boogie-woogie mentor is London pianist Hammy Howell (d. 1999) who gave a young Kavanagh three free music lessons to encourage his enthusiasm.

Online presence and open public venue performances

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. With the rising popularity of smartphones allowing virtually anyone to capture, edit and disseminate musical performances, he began performing in open public venues and uploading his work to streaming platforms.

He regularly performs as Dr K wearing his signature dark hoodie and shades, or wears a uniform as a disguise. He performs to the public passing-by; typically on public pianos at railway stations, airports and many other open public venues, mainly in London. His impromptu performances, weave together popular classical, boogie-woogie, Irish themes and are captured and uploaded to his Facebook page (with 500 thousand followers) and to his YouTube channel, where he has over 2.49 million subscribers.

In December 2023 he was interviewed on TalkTV for ''The James Whale Show'' and claims to have earned a seven-figure sum that year, from his streaming activities. Kavanagh broadcasts some of his performances directly, via live streaming.

St. Pancras Station piano dispute

On 19 January 2024, Dr K uploaded to his YouTube channel, a copy of his live stream, which was filmed from the station concourse. Since then he has achieved well over 10.25 million views. The upload shows Dr K performing on the donated Elton John upright piano within St Pancras railway station. It was followed by a lively interaction with a Chinese group, some wearing colourful costumes and holding Chinese flags. The group asked Dr K not to record or publish their images or voices, expressing their desire to protect their image rights because they were there on behalf of "Chinese TV". Dr K explained to them that filming in a public place is legal in Britain. A man from the group said they loved Dr K's music but you "cannot share our images online" and we "will put a legal action into it". During their exchanges, Dr K referred to both "Communist China" and " Communist flags", with the result that the man accused him of being racist.

During a conversation with a woman from the same group Dr K gestured towards her flag; to which the same man from before screamed, "Why are you touching her? Stop touching her!" causing Dr K to recoil back in surprise. The man again repeated "Do not touch her!", to which Dr K responded that he had not touched the woman but the flag she was holding. As two uniformed British Transport Police officers arrived, one of them ordered Dr K to stop recording. The female officer told Dr K that "because there’s money being made, and they work for a company", the Chinese group had requested the video to be deleted. Dr K accused her of acting like “private security” for the Chinese, which she refuted. She was then heard saying "you can't say that" in relation to his "we're not in China" comment. Dr K defended his actions by citing his rights of free speech, adding that he had not caused any trouble and he had an implied right to film in a public place. The female police officer left the piano area, for a second time, to speak again to the same group who had initially complained. The video footage doesn't show that officer returning again to speak directly to Dr K.

World wide interest in the video led to Kavanagh being interviewed by mainstream media on the topic of the free-speech issues that he had raised. He joined journalist Mike Graham in the studio and then appeared as a guest on ''Piers Morgan Uncensored'' on a subsequent evening both programmes were aired on TalkTV. Kavanagh told Morgan that his video clip already had two strikes against, for removal from his YouTube channel. He urged viewers to download the video in case it was permanently removed from his channel.

Two weeks later, Dr K screened an email he quoted as originating from YouTube's legal support team. It appeared to request that he blur out the faces of some of the subjects shown on his video, citing YouTube's current privacy policy regarding the upload of videos, that identified people without their consent. Their request arose following a handful of alleged privacy infringement complaints.

Professor of Politics Eric Kaufmann from the University of Buckingham, who was interviewed by a staff reporter from TalkTV shows Kaufmann criticising the Chinese group for attempting to transplant their homeland authority and Chinese Communist Party values into Britain.

References

External links

BBC Radio London Dr K interview
"The Jo Good Show", 9 August 2019 on Facebook

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kavanagh, Brendan
1967 births
Boogie-woogie pianists
Boogie-woogie musicians
Swing pianists
British jazz pianists
British male pianists
Musicians from London
British male jazz musicians
Living people
British YouTubers
YouTubers from London
Male jazz pianists
Date of birth missing (living people)