Born in 1975, Roque Rivas began studying guitar and piano in Santiago de Chile before going on to read music theory at the National Conservatory of the University of Chile. From 2001 to 2005, he studied composition, electroacoustics and computer music at the Conservatoire national supérieur musique et danse in Lyon (CNSMD), and joined Emmanuel Nunes's advanced composition class at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris (CNSMDP). From 2006 to 2008, he attended the two-year Composition and Computer Music Course at Ircam, where he studied with Yan Maresz. As part of his training, he also took part in the composition course at the Centre Acanthes in 2004, under the direction of Jonathan Harvey and Philippe Manoury, then in the Atelier Opéra en Création at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence in 2011, under the direction of composer and conductor Peter Eötvös.

He has received various prizes and awards, including first prize in the Electroacoustic Music and Electronic Arts category at the Bourges International Music Competition (IMEB) and the Giga-Hertz Preis für Elektronische Musik, from the Zentrum fur Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM) and the ExperimentalStudio of the Südwestrundfunk (SWR). In 2005, the Francis and Mica Salabert Foundation awarded him the annual prize for the composition department of the Conservatoire national supérieur musique et danse in Lyon.

Roque Rivas has been an artist in residence at the Académie de France in Madrid/Casa de Velázquez (2015--2016), at the Académie de France in Rome/Villa Médicis (2017--2018) and the Villa Albertine in New York (2021--2022).

For the past fifteen years, his compositional work has focused on mixed music and the desire to establish a fusional dialogue between instrumental writing and electroacoustics. Roque Rivas is also interested in the sciences and the other arts -- in particular the visual arts and architecture -- which are strong inspirations in his creative process.

His projects to date bear witness to this taste for exchange and interdisciplinarity. In 2007, he wrote Conical Intersect for bassoon and electronics, inspired by the 1975 encounter -- or rather, strange juxtaposition -- between the architects who designed the Centre Pompidou (Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers) and the American "anarchitect" Gordon Matta-Clark. The following year, he collaborated with video artist Carlos Franklin (co-production Ircam/Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains) on the project Mutations of Matter for five voices, electronics and video: this piece is a study of the texts of Rem Koolhaas and various architectural theorists, in order to recreate visually and musically the mixing, simultaneity and accumulation found in New York City. In recent years, he has been reflecting on how to transpose the principles of perspective into music, in order to enrich his musical writing and our perception of sounds in space.

His works have been played by ensembles and performers such as the Ensemble Intercontemporain, Asko|Schoenberg Ensemble, London Sinfonietta, Ictus Ensemble, Remix Ensemble, L'Itinéraire, Les Cris de Paris, Les Métaboles, and Les Jeunes Solistes, and have been presented at festivals and museums such as the Venice Biennale, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, Festival Ars Musica, Festival Présences, Festival Agora, Festival Manifeste, Festival Musica, Biennale Musiques en Scène, Grand Palais in Paris, Centre Pompidou, Centre Pompidou Metz, Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, Maxxi in Rome, Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Taipei Fine Art Museum, etc.

He regularly gives master classes in Europe, Asia, North and South America and at Ircam where, as researcher-composer, he took part in the development of high-level control libraries for sound synthesis in the OMChroma environment.

His works are published by Durand Salabert Eschig (Universal Music Publishing).