IN: Robert Joseph Cousy (born August 9, 1928) is an American retired professional basketball player. Cousy played point guard with the Boston Celtics from 1950 to 1963 and briefly with the Cincinnati Royals in the 1969-70 season. Making his high school varsity squad as a junior, he went on to earn a scholarship to the College of the Holy Cross, where he led the Crusaders to berths in the 1948 NCAA Tournament and 1950 NCAA Tournament and was named an NCAA All-American for 3 seasons. Cousy was initially drafted by the Tri-Cities Blackhawks as the third overall pick in the first round of the 1950 NBA draft, but after he refused to report, he was picked up by Boston.

Cousy took up basketball at the age of 13 as a student at St. Pascal's elementary school, and was "immediately hooked". The following year, he entered Andrew Jackson High School in St Albans. His basketball success was not immediate, and in fact he was cut from the school team in his first year. Later that year, he joined the St. Albans Lindens of the Press League, a basketball league sponsored by the Long Island Press, where he began to develop his basketball skills and gained much-needed experience. The next year, however, he was again cut during the tryouts for the school basketball team.  That same year, he fell out of a tree and broke his right hand. The injury forced him to play left-handed until his hand healed, making him effectively ambidextrous. In retrospect, he described this accident as "a fortunate event" and cited it as a factor in making him more versatile on the court. During a Press League game, the high school basketball coach saw him play. He was impressed by the budding star's two-handed ability and invited Cousy to come to practice the following day to try out for the junior varsity team. He did well enough to become a permanent member of the JV squad. He continued to practice day and night, and by his junior year was sure he was going to be promoted to the varsity; but failing his citizenship course made him ineligible for the first semester. He joined the varsity squad midway through the season, however, scoring 28 points in his first game. He had no intention of attending college, but after he started to make a name for himself on the basketball court he started to focus on improving in both academics and basketball skills to make it easier for him to get into college.  He again excelled in basketball his senior year, leading his team to the Queens divisional championship and amassing more points than any other New York City high school basketball player. He was even named captain of the Journal-American All-Scholastic team. He then began to plan for college. His family had wanted him to attend a Catholic school, and he wanted to go somewhere outside New York City. Boston College recruited him, and he considered accepting the BC offer, but it had no dormitories, and he was not interested in being a commuter student. Soon afterward, he received an offer from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts about forty miles (64 kilometers) west of Boston. He was impressed by the school, and accepted the basketball scholarship it offered him. He spent the summer before matriculating working at Tamarack Lodge in the Catskill Mountains and playing in a local basketball league along with a number of established college players.
QUESTION: Did he do well once he was on varsity?
IN: Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (French: [fRasis Za maRsel pulek]; 7 January 1899 - 30 January 1963) was a French composer and pianist. His compositions include melodies, solo piano works, chamber music, choral pieces, operas, ballets, and orchestral concert music. Among the best-known are the piano suite Trois mouvements perpetuels (1919), the ballet Les biches (1923), the Concert champetre (1928) for harpsichord and orchestra, the Organ Concerto (1938), the opera Dialogues des Carmelites (1957), and the Gloria (1959) for soprano, choir and orchestra.

Poulenc, a highly accomplished pianist, usually composed at the piano and wrote many pieces for the instrument throughout his career. In Henri Hell's view, Poulenc's piano writing can be divided into the percussive and the gentler style reminiscent of the harpsichord. Hell considers that the finest of Poulenc's music for piano is in the accompaniments to the songs, a view shared by Poulenc himself. The vast majority of the piano works are, in the view of the writer Keith W Daniel, "what might be called 'miniatures'". Looking back at his piano music in the 1950s, the composer viewed it critically: "I tolerate the Mouvements perpetuels, my old Suite en ut [in C], and the Trois pieces. I like very much my two collections of Improvisations, an Intermezzo in A flat, and certain Nocturnes. I condemn Napoli and the Soirees de Nazelles without reprieve."  Of the pieces cited with approval by Poulenc, the fifteen Improvisations were composed at intervals between 1932 and 1959. All are brief: the longest lasts a little more than three minutes. They vary from swift and balletic to tender lyricism, old-fashioned march, perpetuum mobile, waltz and a poignant musical portrait of the singer Edith Piaf. Poulenc's favoured Intermezzo was the last of three. Numbers one and two were composed in August 1934; the A flat followed in March 1943. The commentators Marina and Victor Ledin describe the work as "the embodiment of the word 'charming'. The music seems simply to roll off the pages, each sound following another in such an honest and natural way, with eloquence and unmistakable Frenchness." The eight nocturnes were composed across nearly a decade (1929-38). Whether or not Poulenc originally conceived them as an integral set, he gave the eighth the title "To serve as Coda for the Cycle" (Pour servir de Coda au Cycle). Although they share their generic title with the nocturnes of Field, Chopin and Faure, Poulenc's do not resemble those of the earlier composers, being "night-scenes and sound-images of public and private events" rather than romantic tone poems.  The pieces Poulenc found merely tolerable were all early works: Trois mouvements perpetuels dates from 1919, the Suite in C from 1920 and the Trois pieces from 1928. All consist of short sections, the longest being the "Hymne", the second of the three 1928 pieces, which lasts about four minutes. Of the two works their composer singled out for censure, Napoli (1925) is a three-movement portrait of Italy, and Les Soirees de Nazelles is described by the composer Geoffrey Bush as "the French equivalent of Elgar's Enigma Variations" - miniature character sketches of his friends. Despite Poulenc's scorn for the work, Bush judges it ingenious and witty. Among the piano music not mentioned, favourably or harshly, by Poulenc, the best known pieces include the two Novelettes (1927-28), the set of six miniatures for children, Villageoises (1933), a piano version of the seven-movement Suite francaise (1935), and L'embarquement pour Cythere for two pianos (1953).
QUESTION:
Did he perform these pieces himself?