Born in Venice, Italy, Roberto Poli has been portrayed on many occasions as a Renaissance man, enjoying not only an international career as a performer, but also being very much involved in writing, poetry and painting. Some ascribe this eclectic activity to the immense patrimony of inspiration derived from his native city. While he does not dismiss that as a possibility, he mainly credits the irreplaceable experiences of his childhood and adolescence – a period of his life spent in contact with extraordinary artists in various disciplines, whose influence he deems as fundamental.

It was not until the age of twelve that Roberto Poli started taking piano lessons, when he convinced his parents to rent an upright piano. He was privileged to study for over ten years with Giorgio Vianello, a pupil of Busoni’s disciple Gino Tagliapietra, graduating from the Venice Conservatory Summa Cum Laude and Honors in 1993. His studies continued under Philippe Cassard, Piero Rattalino and Eugenio Bagnoli. Between 1995 and 1996, his main inspiration was his work with Boris Petrushansky at the Piano Academy Incontri col Maestro in Imola, Italy.

In mid 1996, while performing in Japan, Roberto Poli received a phone call that changed his life: he was requested to return immediately to Italy to serve his country, and was stationed at a Bosnian refugee camp at the outskirts of Italy’s border with Croatia, shortly after the war in Bosnia came to an end. It was a period of hardship in which his performing activity came to a nearly complete halt, his only musical outlet being mainly Augenmusik. This hiatus from the concert platform was nevertheless a crucial period of growth in which writing and poetry became an alternative vehicle of expression. It is during this time that his first writings on music and a series of poems depicting the life of the Bosnian refugees and the experiences lived during those months took shape.

As his duties came to an end, Roberto Poli moved to North America, invited by the Gina Bachauer Foundation to participate in their International Piano Competition. In August 1998, he settled in Boston to follow the great artistry of Russell Sherman, Distinguished Artist in Residence at the New England Conservatory, and made the United States his home. Under Sherman’s tutelage, he received a Master’s Degree with artistic distinction and academic honors, and the prestigious Artist Diploma – a highly selective degree reserved only to a few select candidates.

After Roberto Poli’s American debut was saluted by the press as "pure magic", similar assessments have been expressed around the world in cities such as New York, Dublin, Rome, Boston, Brussels, Calgary, Seoul, and wherever he travels. Acclaimed as a soloist on both piano and harpsichord, and as a chamber musician and conductor, Roberto Poli has appeared with the Monet Ensemble, the Trio di Venezia, the Chameleon Arts Ensemble of Boston, soprano Elizabeth Keusch, clarinetist Jonathan Cohler and cellists Sarah Carter and Ronald Lowry. In recent years, he has appeared in extensive and critically acclaimed tours of South Korea and the United States with world-renowned cellist Daniel Lee.

Roberto Poli is an enthusiastically sought-after teacher and lecturer. He holds positions at the Rivers School Conservatory in Weston, Massachusetts, where he is the Artist in Residence, and at the New England Conservatory’s Preparatory School, teaching a select group of talented pupils. He also enjoys a busy schedule of masterclasses and lectures around the country.

In 2003, on one month's notice, Roberto Poli gave the American premiere of Friederich Kuhlau's Piano Concerto in C Major and Paul Schierbek's The Night for piano and orchestra with the Scandia Symphony at Trinity Church in New York City, under the baton of Dorrit Matson. The occasion was a festive one: the concert celebrated the reopening of the sanctuary, which had been severely damaged during the terrorist attacks of September 11.

Over the last fifteen years, Roberto Poli has been an indefatigable proponent of Elizabethan masters such as John Bull, William Byrd and Orlando Gibbons, programming their works extensively both in Europe and the United States. His interest in resurrecting this repertoire, which was approached at the piano only with caution by Glenn Gould in the 60s and 70s, has developed into a whole new approach to treating the multi-voiced textures of these unique keyboard works as if they were consort music, aiming to illuminate the punctuation of each instrumental line. Roberto Poli is scheduled to record an all-William Byrd album in the Spring of 2009, featuring fourteen pieces from My Ladye Nevels Booke of 1591. In addition to reviving Elizabethan music, Roberto Poli is also recognized for restoring original practices of the Classical era in his performances of Haydn and Mozart, featuring improvised embellishments and cadenzas in Concerti and solo works.

Considered by many a rising authority on the music of Chopin, which he has comprehensively studied through manuscripts and original editions and widely performed throughout the world, Roberto Poli is currently pursuing a project encompassing the composer’s complete works. Intended to celebrate Chopin's 200th birthday in 2010, this project includes recordings as well as his first book, The Secret Life of Musical Notation: defying interpretive traditions, which presents new insights into Chopin's music. This volume on pianistic interpretation provides a new vision of Chopin's works that is both scholarly and practical.

Roberto Poli lives in Boston where he continues his work as a musician, writer and painter, in addition to the restoration of his 1850s Victorian house on historic Chester Square.