Robert Greenberg was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1954, and has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1978.  Greenberg received a B.A. in music, magna cum laude, from Princeton University in 1976.  His principal teachers at Princeton were Edward Cone, Daniel Werts, and Carlton Gamer in composition, Claudio Spies and Paul Lansky in analysis, and Jerry Kuderna in piano.  In 1984, Greenberg received a Ph.D. in music composition, with distinction, from the University of California, Berkeley, where his principal teachers were Andrew Imbrie and Olly Wilson in composition and Richard Felciano in analysis.

Greenberg has composed over forty-five works for a wide variety of instrumental and vocal ensembles.  Recent performances of his works have taken place in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, England, Ireland, Greece, Italy and The Netherlands, where his Child's Play for String Quartet was performed at the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam.

Greenberg has received numerous honors, including three Nicola de Lorenzo Composition Prizes and three Meet-The-Composer Grants.  Recent commissions have been received from the Koussevitzky Foundation in the Library of Congress, the Alexander String Quartet, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Strata Ensemble, pianist Robert Helps, and the XTET ensemble.  Greenberg is a board member and an artistic director of COMPOSERS, INC., a composers' collective/production organization based in San Francisco.  His music is published by Fallen Leaf Press and CPP/Belwin, and is recorded on the Innova label.

Greenberg has performed, taught and lectured extensively across North America and Europe.  He is currently music historian-in-residence with San Francisco Performances, where he has lectured and performed since 1994, and Professor in the Advanced Management Program at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.   He has served on the faculties of the University of California at Berkeley, California State University at Hayward, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he chaired the Department of Music History and Literature from 1989-2001 and served as the Director of the Adult Extension Division from 1991-1996.  Greenberg has lectured for some of the most prestigious musical and arts organizations in the United States, including the San Francisco Symphony (where for ten years he was host and lecturer for the Symphony’s nationally acclaimed “Discovery Series”), Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Van Cliburn Foundation, the Chautauqua Institute, the Nasher Sculpture Century, and Villa Montalvo.  In addition, Greenberg is a sought after lecturer for businesses and business schools, and has recently spoken for such diverse organizations as Canadian Pacific, Deutsches Bank, the University of California/Haas School of Business Executive Seminar, the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, Harvard Business School Publishing, Kaiser-Permanente, the Strategos Institute, Quintiles Transnational, the Young Presidents’ Organization, the World Presidents’ Organization, and the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco.  Greenberg has been profiled in the Wall Street Journal, INC. Magazine, the Times of London, the Los Angeles Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury News, the University of California Alumni Magazine, Princeton Alumni Weekly, and Diablo Magazine.  Greenberg is the resident composer and music historian to National Public Radio’s “Weekend All Things Considered”.

In February, 2003, The Bangor Daily News (Maine) called Greenberg “the Elvis of music history and appreciation”, an appraisal that has given more pleasure than any other.

In May 1993, Greenberg taped a forty-eight lecture course entitled “How to Listen to and Understand Great Music” for the Teaching Company/SuperStar Teachers Program of Chantilly, Virginia.  (This course was named in the January, 1996 edition of Inc. Magazine as one of “The Nine Leadership Classics You’ve Never Read.”) Formerly associated with the Smithsonian Institute, the Teaching Company is considered the preeminent producer of college level educational tapes in the United States.  Nine further courses, entitled “Concert Masterworks,” “Bach and the High Baroque,” “The Symphonies of Beethoven,” “How to Listen to and Understand Opera,” “Great Masters,” “The Operas of Mozart,” “The Life and Operas of Verdi,” “The Symphony,” and “The Chamber Music of Mozart” have been recorded since, totaling over 400 lectures.