Dorothy Rudd Moore

Between 1988 and 1990, she sat on the music panel of the New York State Council of the Arts.

Moore has received the Lucy Moten fellowship and other grants, and in 1968 became a co-founder of the Society of Black Composers in New York. Her works, Dirge and Deliverance, and Songs from the Dark Tower were released by Performance Records in 1981. In 1985, the world premiere of her opera, Frederick Douglass, took place in New York City.

Moore worked as a private music teacher, from 1965-66 taught at the Harlem School of the Arts, in 1969 at New York University and in 1971 at the Bronx Community College. She married cellist and conductor, Kermit Moore, in 1964. In 1969, Moore and her husband were almost prevented from performing at the 1969 Damrosch Memorial Concert because "administrators fretted over having not just one but two 'Negroes' on the program."

Moore was born in New Castle, Delaware. Her mother was a singer and Moore would make up her own songs as child. Moore knew she wanted to become a composer at a young age and took piano lessons as a child. She learned to play clarinet so that in high school, she should join the previously all-male band. She graduated from Howard University in 1963 where she studied with Mark Fax. She received the Lucy Moten Fellowship to study in France where she continued her studies with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in 1963 and Chou Wen-Chung in New York in 1965.

Dorothy Rudd Moore (June 4, 1940 – March 30, 2022) was an American composer and music educator. She was one of the co-founders of the Society of Black Composers. Her works were unpublished, but are available through the American Composers Alliance.