She is considered one of the leading women composers of color for her generation and did commissions for the National Symphony, Opera Ebony, the Buffalo Philharmonic, and solo artists.
[7] Moore started her undergraduate studies at Howard University as a music education major but later switched to composition, as she was constantly inventing songs and melodies when she played, "I didn't even know that the word 'composer' existed...
Moore worked as a private music teacher, from 1965 to 1966 taught at the Harlem School of the Arts, in 1969 at New York University, and in 1971 at the Bronx Community College.
"[12] Moore received the Lucy Moten fellowship in 1963 as her first award and followed by many other grants, and in 1968 became a co-founder of the Society of Black Composers in New York.
There are eight songs set to poems by black writers including Dream Variation by Langston Hughes and the namesake of the cycle, From the Dark Tower, by Countee Cullen.
The artistic director was Benjamin Matthews with conducting by Warren George Wilson, lighting by Ron Burns, and stage direction by Ward Fleming.
Tim Page called it "not so much an opera as a series of musical meditations on love, death, religion, political oppression and eventual deliverance.