The last two courses were simply amazing ... the teachers, the atmosphere, the people, the place and of course the music make it something special. Seriously, thanks a lot for gifting me with an opportunity to live something like that. 
Thank you so much for a fabulous, inspiring and utterly delicious week! I really feel that I have come away ready to perform in front of an audience, which is what I set out to do.
Castelfranc was just a WONDERFUL experience for me and for my music.
The time at Castelfranc was magical. I have returned to the piano with so many new ideas and new skills. Most important to me, though, is the renewal of the passion for the piano I seemed to have lost many years ago when other responsibilities and activities took over my life. The course helped me to reconnect.
Paul Roberts (Director)
As a pianist and writer, as a lecturer and enlightening teacher, Paul Roberts has a versatility and energy that takes him around the world. He has given recitals and masterclasses at the conservatories of Sydney and Brisbane in Australia, in Sweden at the Academies in Stockholm and Malmo, in Madrid at the University of Alcala; in the United States he is a regular guest of the Juilliard School in New York and the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. He has played and taught at the University of Washington, San Francisco Conservatoire, Portland State University, University of California, Northridge, and at Baylor College. He has played at the summer festivals of Mendocino and Sacramento, and returns each year to high acclaim to the summer festival of Portland Piano International.
Click here to read quotes about Paul Roberts's masterclasses at the Portland International Piano Festival in Oregon . . .
Paul Roberts’s biography of Debussy was published by Phaidon Press in April 2008 and has received great praise from critics. The Independent commented that 'this distinguished interpreter of Debussy's music has succeeded in distilling a lifetime's reading, listening and thinking to create an intimate portrait that takes us nearer to the heart of the music than any biography before.' The BBC Music Magazine commented ‘Paul Roberts meets the challenges of both person and music with empathy and acumen.’ He is also author of another celebrated book on Debussy, Images: The Piano Music of Claude Debussy (Amadeus Press), a combined study of music, poetry and painting. He is currently working on a companion volume, Reflections: The Piano Music of Maurice Ravel.
In great Britain Paul Roberts is an Honorary Fellow of the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London; and a Professor of Piano at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester.
Paul Roberts has recorded two discs in a projected series of the complete piano music of Debussy. The first received a four-star recommendation from Classic CD magazine who wrote that it was "probably the most desirable modern recording of the Preludes currently available in the UK" while Erato Disques said his performances were "comparable to the very greatest." DVD recordings include Mists, Fairies and Fireworks: Debussy Preludes Book I (Hal Leonard 331696), in which he discusses and performs a selection of Debussy's Preludes; and two presentations, now released world-wide as television programmes for Medici TV, on Ravel's Bolero and Debussy's La mer, with Daniel Barenboim conducting the Berlin Philharmonic. Recordings of Ravel's piano music are planned to co-incide with the publication next year of his new book on Ravel.
The magnificent Priory at Ambialet in the Tarn Gorge is the summer school's new home. Over the years it has maintained and developed the original vision of its founders: to nurture the highest standards of music-making in idyllic surroundings...
Music at Ambialet offers accommodation in the newly restored, 11th-century Benedictine priory in the village of Ambialet, in the Gorge du Tarn.
"Students have returned year after year. Clearly this is one summer school that could become addictive"
- BBC Music Magazine
"The place, the people, the weather, the food, everything was memorable."
