Fanny Waterman

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Dame Fanny Waterman, DBE (born 22 March 1920) is a piano teacher, and the founder, Chairman and Artistic Director of the Leeds International Pianoforte Competition. Appointed OBE in 1971, CBE in 2001 and DBE in the 2005 New Year's Honours, Waterman also holds an Honorary Doctorate of Music University of Leeds.

Waterman was born in Leeds; her father, Myer Waterman, a Russian Jew, had emigrated to England to work as a jeweller. She began to study with Tobias Matthay when she was 17; she started giving public performances, and in 1941 opened the concert season in Leeds with the Leeds Symphony Society. She won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music and studied under Cyril Smith. In 1944, she married Dr. Geoffrey de Keyser and in 1950, with the arrival of her first child, gave up her concert career and concentrated on teaching. By the early 1960s, Waterman felt that young British pianists needed a goal to give them a competitive edge with foreign pianists.

In 1961, with the help of her friend Marion Thorpe (then Countess of Harewood) she jointly founded the Leeds International Pianoforte Competition. She is artistic director of the competition and, since 1981, chairman of the competition jury. Her contribution to the city of Leeds was recognised in April 2006, when she was given the Freedom of the City of Leeds – the last recipient being Nelson Mandela in 2001.

Waterman is the Director of the Postgraduate Certificate in Advanced Piano Performance at Leeds College of Music.