Rihards Dubra was born in Jurmala on the Baltic, about 30 miles from Riga, and was brought up in the country by his grandmother. He studied at the Emils Darzins special music school in Jurmala, where he now teaches, and the Latvia Music Academy, specialising in composition. He went on to complete his Master's Degree in 1995. He teaches theory, is organist of Mater Dolorosa Church in Riga, and is a member of the Schola Gregoriana Rigensis singers.

The walks which Dubra takes along the Baltic coast are a major source of inspiration. He finds ideas at the keyboard and builds on these in his imagination before writing the music down. His earliest works were choral settings of Latin sacred texts, written when the church was still banned by the Soviet Regime. He has written instrumental and orchestral works and has had a fruitful, creative relationship with the French ensemble, Tempo di Cello.

He says that for a long while he has had a great love of Gregorian chant and the music of the Middle Ages, and that these provide his first favourite inspiration. "I try to write music in the style of meditation. Sometimes it longs for the hearer (especially, when he is not ready for dreaming or imagination), but always it is like a call to heaven, sometimes like a very silent call. To listen to this music is to spend some still, soft time in the embrace of many sounds, which, despite the many climaxes, are mostly meant to awaken visionary thoughts. For all my works I had to count on a touch of divinity to write - it means, I think, that I do not myself write the music. Music is always coming to me, and making me work. Therefore I don't work if I have no inspiration, ideas, feeling. I don't think about structure - it naturally depends on the musical impulse. Certainly, experience also plays an special part. The style of my music is always in affinity with Gregorian chant or the music of the Middle Ages through the view of a man who lives in the present century.