Robert grew up in Rome, Italy, where he studied classical music at the conservatory. He first learned jazz theory from seminal books by Jerry Coker and David Baker, and deepened his knowledge of music theory extensively with teachers from the Manhattan College of Music (Harold Danko, Garry Dial), The New School (David Lopato, Gerard D'Angelo) and the City College of New York (Mike Holober, Dan Carillo), where he gained a BMus degree in Jazz Piano. He has collaborated as a pianist with some notable names such as Steve Grossman, Sal Nistico, Massimo Urbani, Mark Murphy, and Eliot Zigmund.

In 1993 he started going to the Barry Harris workshops, and attended over 200 all over the world, including New York, Verona, Rome, The Hague, and Madrid. He has transcribed and catalogued hundreds of Barry's piano exercises, and is currently organizing them into progressive courses of study for the Barry Harris Institute of Jazz.

Robert also owns a software company which he created in 2008 to develop computer-based music learning tools. His flagship product, called HarmonyBuilder, is an application for learning 4 part harmony in the style of Bach chorales.