Olev Kents was born and raised in Tapa, estonia. His first hands on experience with organs was in high school where he had to assemble an organ back together to cover for his friend who had taken it apart and was going to be in trouble had it came out. Since that little incident turned into a successful montage Olev then decided to follow up on the newly sparked interest and enrolled into music school to get the basic understanding of the main functions of the pipe organ and widen his musical knowledge base in general.
his deep bass voice made him choose singing as his major in Tartu H.Eller Music school. For a few years after the graduation Olev worked as an actor and choir singer in theater Vanemuine. Then he accepted a job as a director of Vihula Cultural House. Since the summers were quite slow in the country side cultural scene he had more time in his hands to work and study upon his passion - organs. The brake through year for him was 1987 when Hardo Kriisa offered him a job at newly opened Estonian national organ workshop.
In 1990 as the Soviet Union was crumbling and borders slowly opening to the outside world Olev managed to get an internship at M. Porthan Organ workshop. That had evolved into a fruitful 22 year collaboration. during that time Olev also participated in professional trainings at C.Scheffleri ja C.Kieseke Organ Workshops in Germany. He also traveled to many other workshops in Spain, Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Latvia and Finland to gather international know how. Combined with studies in business managing created a great soil for a business to prosper.
25 years of constant learning and development have made it possible to widen the approach. While Porthan Workshop is internationally known for recreating authentic Baroque and niche organs, Olev is also well experienced with romantic, classical and mixture style organs.