Bonds' compositions include orchestral and choral works, musical theater, art songs, popular songs, chamber music, and solo piano pieces. She collaborated frequently with poet Langston Hughes in some of her best-known works, including the musical Shakespeare in Harlem and the cantata Ballad of the Brown King. Troubled Water is a concert piece based on the spiritual Wade in the Water. She received her D.M.A. degree in composition at the University of Michigan, where her teachers included Leslie Bassett, William Bolcom, Eugene Kurzt, and George Wilson. She composes in a variety of styles, and her works include The Eleventh Hour for orchestra, Moods for solo piano, and Three Spiritual Settings for men's chorus.
Pulsations is unified by a two-note motive symbolizing a heart beat.
In 1931, she completed the M.A. degree and professional diploma at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York, studying theory and composition with Howard Murphy. She taught at Virginia State College from 1927 to 1971, and her former students include many celebrated musicians. Moore composed in a variety of forms, and her compositional techniques range from conventional and tonal to atonal and twelve-tone. Before I'd Be a Slave was composed for choreographer Barbara Hollis and the Modern Dance Group. She also attended the Eastman School of Music, University of Southern California, and Westminster Choir College, and studied with Nadia Boulanger at the American Conservatory in France in the summer of 1977.