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Amir Satvat
One Thursday, during a dean’s coffee at the Carroll School of Management, Richard Keeley asked a particularly cultured student, a regular at the weekly get-togethers, to explain a fugue, a musical composition in which themes are repeated, often at different pitches. “He gave a five-minute précis of what the fugue form is,” Associate Dean Keeley recalls. “I was standing there agape.” The student was Amir Satvat, a finance major; a composer who plays several instruments, including harpsichord; a music lover with a proselytizing passion for opera; and someone who outlined his career goals at age 15—and stuck to them. On his undergraduate application to the Carroll School, under “possible career or professional plans,” Satvat filled in simply: financial analyst, opera conductor, computer engineer. Satvat started piano at age five, wrote his first of about 40 compositions at seven, composed an opera, and became proficient in several instruments including French horn, organ, and harpsichord. Among his CD collection are seven recordings of The Marriage of Figaro, because, explains Satvat, “It is a timeless masterpiece, and I believe that no number of varying interpretations or performances of it can do full justice to its utter perfection.” For Satvat, opera stands alone as an art form. “It’s free and beautiful,” he explains, “yet rhythmically tied down.” Not one for understatement, he calls the art form “the greatest accomplishment of mankind.” Satvat helped begin opera companies at Boston College, where he played harpsichord in a student production of Dido and Aeneas, and during his junior year at the University of Oxford, where he also was named organ scholar of his college. He ultimately decided against a music career, explaining that he did not want to make the magic mundane. “If it were my career, it wouldn’t be an escape,” he says. “Every career becomes a routine thing. I don’t want that to happen to music.” While Satvat may have been a musical prodigy, he was also a financial one of sorts. His father, an obstetrician, started teaching him about price-earnings ratios when he was only ten. Within a few years, Satvat was doling out financial advice to dozens of cousins, aunts, and uncles. When he was 15, he got his first investment banking summer job. That same year, he laid out his goals, which included a job at Goldman Sachs. He headed there after graduation. Satvat leaves Boston College with a diploma that represents more than an excellent education. It means the fulfillment of family expectations, the continuance of tradition. Satvat’s father was a star student and his grandfather was one of the first to graduate from a college in Iran. The power of his lineage is evident as he describes a particular graduation present—not a car, a computer, or a European trip. The treasured gift? His grandfather’s diploma. Photo: Amir Satvat in McGuinn Hall. |
