Cameron Roberts is a concert pianist, physician (anaesthetist) and specialist in the science of elite performance in musicians – especially pianists. He has spent his career working at the intersection of all three. Trained in both medicine and music at the University of Melbourne, and later at the Australian National Academy of Music, he went on to complete a PhD examining the physical and perceptual aspects of the pianist's touch — research that grew out of the simple question: why do some approaches to piano practice work better than others and what are the skills that a player must have for virtuosic levels of performance to be possible.

That question became the foundation of Optimizing Pianism: Evidence-Based Perspectives (Bloomsbury, 2025), the most original book in the market on piano playing which brings the best of science from a vast range of disciplines to piano technique, practice processes and injury prevention. The aim, in his consulting work as in the book, is to bring the same evidence-based rigour to pianism that any other serious discipline would expect of itself — replacing guesswork and inherited habits with facts and modernised processes.

He is based in London, where he divides his time between performing internationally as a soloist and chamber musician (see www.cameronroberts.com.au), consulting privately with professional and pre-professional pianists, and working part-time as an anaesthetist. He is regularly invited to speak on this work at conservatoires, music schools and conferences, and continues to record, perform and write alongside it.

'Physics, perception and cognitive biases in evaluating piano

tone quality and its causality: truth in gesture?'