IN: Christopher D'Olier Reeve (September 25, 1952 - October 10, 2004) was an American actor. He achieved stardom for his acting achievements. In particular, he is best known for his motion picture portrayal of the classic DC comic book superhero Superman, beginning with the acclaimed Superman (1978), for which he won a BAFTA Award. Reeve appeared in other critically acclaimed films such as The Bostonians (1984), Street Smart (1987) and The Remains of the Day (1993).

After graduating from Princeton Day School in June 1970, Reeve acted in plays in Boothbay, Maine and planned to go to New York City to find a career in theater. Instead, at the advice of his mother, he applied for college. He was accepted into Brown, Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, Cornell, Northwestern, and Princeton. Reeve claimed that he chose Cornell primarily because it is a three-and-a-half-hour drive from New York City, where he planned to start his career as an actor, despite the fact that Princeton and Columbia are considerably closer to the city than Cornell, with Columbia being in New York City, just a few miles uptown from the theater district.  Reeve joined the theater department in Cornell and played Pozzo in Waiting for Godot, Segismundo in Life Is a Dream, Hamlet in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and Polixenes in The Winter's Tale. Late in his freshman year, Reeve received a letter from Stark Hesseltine, a high-powered agent who had discovered Robert Redford and represented actors such as Richard Chamberlain, Michael Douglas, and Susan Sarandon. Hesseltine had seen Reeve in A Month in the Country and wanted to represent him. The two met and decided that instead of dropping out of school, Reeve could come to New York once a month to meet casting agents and producers to find work for the summer vacation. That summer, he toured in a production of Forty Carats with Eleanor Parker.  The next year, Reeve received a full-season contract with the San Diego Shakespeare Festival, with roles as Edward IV in Richard III, Fenton in The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Dumaine in Love's Labour's Lost at the Old Globe Theatre.  Before his third year of college, Reeve took a three-month leave of absence. He flew to Glasgow and saw theatrical productions throughout the United Kingdom. He was inspired by the actors and often had conversations with them in bars after the performances. He helped actors at the Old Vic with their American accents by reading the newspaper aloud for them. He then flew to Paris, where he spoke fluent French for his entire stay; he had studied it from third grade until his second year in Cornell. He watched many performances and immersed himself in the culture before finally returning to New York to reunite with his girlfriend.

Was  it successful?

OUT: 

Answer the question at the end by quoting:

Samuel Luther "Big Sam" Thompson (March 5, 1860 - November 7, 1922) was an American professional baseball player from 1884 to 1898 and with a brief comeback in 1906. At 6 feet, 2 inches, the Indiana native was one of the larger players of his day and was known for his prominent handlebar mustache. He played as a right fielder in Major League Baseball for the Detroit Wolverines (1885-88), Philadelphia Phillies (1889-1898) and Detroit Tigers (1906). He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1974.
At age 36, Thompson played his last full season of professional baseball in 1896. His average dipped to .298, but he still managed to collect 100 RBIs. Thompson's throwing remained strong as he turned in one of the finest defensive performances of his career. Despite appearing in only 119 games in the outfield, he led the league in outfield fielding percentage (.974), outfield assists (28), and double plays from the outfield (11). One sports writer noted that, even at age 38, Thompson "possessed an arm that the fastest sprinters in the big league had a lot of respect for." As a team, however, the Phillies fell to eighth place in the National League with a 62-68 record.  In 1897, at age 37, Thompson was sidelined by pain and appeared in only three games. Some accounts suggest that Thompson's absence from the lineup may have also been the result of his not getting along with Philadelphia's new manager George Stallings. Without Thompson, the 1897 Phillies dropped to 10th place with a 55-77 record.  Before the 1898 season began, Thompson gave an interview in which he questioned the Phillies chances to compete in 1898: "What are the Phillies' chances this season? Six clubs, Cincinnati Baltimore, Boston, New York, Cleveland and Brooklyn are bound to beat them, and they will have to fight hard to lead the second division, and I very much doubt if they can do that." Though his loyalty to the Phillies was questioned, Thompson did return in 1898 and was batting .349 with 15 RBIs, five doubles, three triples, a home run after 14 games. However, Thompson opted to leave the team in May 1898 and return to his home in Detroit. His sudden retirement has been attributed to a "combination of homesickness and chronic back pain." Other accounts indicate that continued tension with manager Stallings contributed to Thompson's decision to retire.

What happened with the 1896-98 seasons?

At age 36, Thompson played his last full season of professional baseball in 1896.

input: In 1948, Takemitsu conceived the idea of electronic music technology, or in his own words, to "bring noise into tempered musical tones inside a busy small tube." During the 1950s, Takemitsu had learned that in 1948 "a French [engineer] Pierre Schaeffer invented the method(s) of musique concrete based on the same idea as mine. I was pleased with this coincidence."  In 1951, Takemitsu was a founding member of the anti-academic Jikken Kobo (Shi Yan Gong Fang , "experimental workshop"): an artistic group established for multidisciplinary collaboration on mixed-media projects, who sought to avoid Japanese artistic tradition. The performances and works undertaken by the group introduced several contemporary Western composers to Japanese audiences. During this period he wrote Saegirarenai Kyusoku I ("Uninterrupted Rest I", 1952: a piano work, without a regular rhythmic pulse or barlines); and by 1955 Takemitsu had begun to use electronic tape-recording techniques in such works as Relief Statique (1955) and Vocalism A*I (1956). Takemitsu also studied in the early 1950s with the composer Fumio Hayasaka, perhaps best known for the scores he wrote for films by Kenji Mizoguchi and Akira Kurosawa, the latter of whom Takemitsu would collaborate with decades later.  In the late 1950s chance brought Takemitsu international attention: his Requiem for string orchestra (1957  listen ), written as an homage to Hayasaka, was heard by Igor Stravinsky in 1958 during his visit to Japan. (The NHK had organised opportunities for Stravinsky to listen to some of the latest Japanese music; when Takemitsu's work was put on by mistake, Stravinsky insisted on hearing it to the end.) At a press conference later, Stravinsky expressed his admiration for the work, praising its "sincerity" and "passionate" writing. Stravinsky subsequently invited Takemitsu to lunch; and for Takemitsu this was an "unforgettable" experience. After Stravinsky returned to the U.S., Takemitsu soon received a commission for a new work from the Koussevitsky Foundation which, he assumed, had come as a suggestion from Stravinsky to Aaron Copland. For this he composed Dorian Horizon, (1966), which was premiered by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Copland.

Answer this question "what was Jikken Kobo?"
output:
an artistic group established for multidisciplinary collaboration on mixed-media projects, who sought to avoid Japanese artistic tradition.