Wilhelm Kemper has been involved in music since his earliest youth. He received his first piano lessons at the age of seven from cantor Anton Zimmermann, who himself was a master student of the Austrian concert pianist and university professor Karl Hermann Pillney and the Cologne Cathedral organist and university professor Josef Zimmermann.

Although he studied business administration (PhD 1983) in preparation for taking over the management of the family business, the internationally active lacquer factory “Bollig & Kemper” (since 1979), he simultaneously pursued private musical training with renowned teachers in piano (Professors G. Ludwig, D. Gomez, K. Merle) and organ (A. Zimmermann) to concert-level proficiency. Since then, he has been active in his free time as an organist and pianist at church and chamber music concerts.

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He spent his military service as a pianist in the Bundeswehr's Staff Music Corps. He performed his first organ concert at the age of 16 in St. Rochus Church in Cologne. Later highlights include, among others, an organ concert at St. Paul's Cathedral in London in 1998, a public organ meditation at the new organ of the Frauenkirche in Dresden in 2009, and a highly regarded "Wandelkonzert" (a concert series held in multiple locations) on a Bensmann organ and an Ahrend organ in Leer, East Frisia, in 2013. Additionally, he regularly plays the Cologne Cathedral organ and participates in concerts as part of the Cologne Art Salon Festival "Music in the Houses of the City."