Although he did play in master classes, most notably by Eduardo Fernandez, Phillips did not return to formal education until 1999, when he entered the University of Miami.

[1] In 1991 he released his first album, Guitarre Nouveau, which included works by Philip Glass, Frank Martin, Eberhard Weber, and Thelonious Monk, as well as his own compositions.

[5] In 2016 Phillips embarked on a commissioning project, enlisting six Central Florida based composers to each create a new work for solo guitar in a dance rhythm.

The composers who participated in the project were Troy Gifford, Jorge Morel, Benoit Glazer, Charles Griffin, all from Orlando; Howard J. Buss, from Lakeland, Florida; and Rex Willis, from Sarasota.

His doctoral dissertation is titled, The Influence of Miguel Llobet on the Pedagogy, Repertoire, and Stature of the Guitar in the Twentieth Century( 2002, OCLC 51796355).

It was while researching his dissertation, and on the advice of guitar scholars Ron Purcell and Angelo Gilardino that Phillips sought and found a complete archive of Llobet.

In 2010 he left All Saints' Academy, and accepted a position teaching classical guitar at Lois Cowles Harrison Center for the Visual and Performing Arts.

In 1983 Phillips appeared in a series of instructional videos titled "Classical Guitar Made Easy" which was broadcast on Group W Cable.

In 2011, taking advantage of new technology and relatively inexpensive production costs, Robert produced and recorded a series of videos of himself performing standards from the classical guitar repertory.

The first of these, "A Spanish Recital", consisted of works by Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados, Miguel Llobet, Francisco Tárrega, and Federico Moreno Torroba.