No, first there's Melissa Errico, floating a sustained phrase, negotiating high soprano flights, singing incomparable lyrics with interpretive flair and shining like a harbor light.

The songs opened with brief instrumental preludes - often, Sher Ali reached over to his brother's harmonium to start a tune - and a few sustained vocal phrases.

Dancers move in and out of positions rather than sustained phrases.

Scott Westerfeld's taped score contrasted spurts of insistent instrumental sounds with sustained vocal phrases.

But for classical music, with its sustained phrases, steady pitch is essential; and copy decks often proved unsatisfactory.

Voices intone the stories in sustained phrases, swooping between speech and song.

Near the end many songs settled into an ostinato while Maryo sang sustained curving phrases, like controlled sighs on the verge of sobs or incantations.

The music for Gaea, the mother, is so bizarre: long, sustained phrases that never change in tempo.

He often follows sustained phrases with abrupt ones, and lets smoothly lyrical passages explode into twitches and shivers.

He'd play sustained, dreamy phrases, then suddenly snap them into sharp focus.