Carlos Rafael Rivera (Griselda, Monsieur Spade)

Right on Cue

Grammy- and two-time Emmy-winning composer Carlos Rafael Rivera has spent the last decade building moody, complex musical worlds around complicated characters. His earliest prominent work was with regular collaborator Scott Frank on films like A Walk Among the Tombstones, and the Netflix miniseries Godless. But it was his mercurial work on Frank's miniseries The Queen's Gambit that earned Rivera breakout status. Since then, he's worked on a host of films and series both with Frank and elsewhere: Apple's Lessons in Chemistry, HBO's Hacks. But his two most recent scores, and some of his best, have him dealing with different ends of the prestige-crime-drama ecosystem. Take Netflix's Griselda, in which an unrecognizable Sofia Vergara climbs her way to the top of Miami's drug trade as the real-life Cocaine Godmother; scored like an opera, Rivera's sound is full of harpsichord, lone voices, big breathy melodramatic moments. On the other side of the Atlantic lies AMC's stellar miniseries Monsieur Spade, in which Clive Owen plays an older Sam Spade solving a mystery while spending his retirement in rural France after World War II. There, the usual noir trappings are leavened by a distinct sense of melancholy, lonely guitar strains underlining the postwar fragility of its French setting. This week, I'm thrilled to have Rivera on to talk about these shows and so much more, from his musical journey with the guitar to his philosophies on which perspective to score from. It's a brilliant chat (maybe one of the best this podcast has ever enjoyed), and I hope you enjoy. You can find Carlos Rafael Rivera at his official website here. Griselda is currently streaming on Netflix, and Monsieur Spade runs weekly on AMC and AMC+. You can also stream each soundtrack at your music service of choice.