Carlos Rafael Rivera

Carlos Rafael Rivera is a Grammy and three-time Emmy Award-winning composer whose seven Primetime Emmy nominations span dramatic score, original main-title theme music, and original music and lyrics. His Emmy-winning work includes Godless, The Queen’s Gambit, and Lessons in Chemistry; The Queen’s Gambit also earned the Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media. Rivera’s story-first approach—often composing directly from the screenplay—began with A Walk Among the Tombstones and a longstanding collaboration with writer-director Scott Frank that has continued through Godless, The Queen’s Gambit, Monsieur Spade, and Department Q. His credits also include all five seasons of Hacks, Griselda, Chupa, Ezra, They Will Kill You, Just Beyond, and La Reina del Sur 3. Upcoming films include Netflix’s Fight for ’84 and New Line Cinema’s The Revenge of La Llorona. A protégé of Randy Newman, Rivera holds a DMA from USC’s Thornton School of Music. Born in Washington, D.C., and raised across the United States, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Panama, he is based in Miami, where he serves as Professor and Chair of Media Scoring and Production at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music.