Composed of weird "found" materials - bones, stones, shells, shards, glass eyes, plastic jewels (and sometimes suggesting the remains of a cannibal feast on Balkan royalty) - these have a tightly reined but gorgeous extravagance that is hinted at in his Surrealist excesses.

There were also moments of uncommonly beautiful piano tone, tightly reined and fluid, conveying an interesting sense of distance.

Since Sept. 11, these phrases or similar ones have become a kind of mantra of many who either actively oppose a military response against the Taliban and Al Qaeda or who feel that the first priority is to keep any such a response tightly reined in.

Impatience drums within me, tightly reined as a rearing Arabian stallion.

His wrath was directed also at Communism, which tightly reined in the Russian Orthodox Church.

He led them to the Super Bowl following the 1980 season, but lost to the Raiders, the buccaneering bunch that was in stark contrast to the tightly reined Eagles.

They were young, tall, red-cheeked fellows who held their quivering horses tightly reined.

He's a real composer, for all the tightly reined improvisatory latitude he allows his group, Episteme, which is heard here.

Matilda reined in her black mare tightly; the horse was already frothing at the mouth, her hooves beating rhythmically on the slippery cobblestones.