ALAIN COBLENCE is an international corporate lawyer and a member of both the New York and Paris Bars since 1975. COBLENCE & ASSOCIATES (formerly Coblence & Warner) was founded in 1981. The firm has maintained offices in New York City and Paris since its inception.

Born in New York of French parents, he was raised in both countries and became an attorney in France in 1970. After practicing in Paris for several years, he passed the Bar Exam and opened his own New York law firm in 1975 to specialize in the representation of French corporate clients in the United States and of American corporate clients in France.

Outside of his practice, Alain Coblence has founded numerous philanthropic institutions in cultural fields (music, theatre and the visual arts) as well as charitable and human rights initiatives. He is a member of the Board of the French American Foundation and of several American charitable foundations such as the Byrd Hoffman Foundation which supports the work of the director Robert Wilson or the Forsythe Foundation created to promote the art of the choreographer William Forsythe.

Between 1992 and 1997, he was also the President of the European Mozart Foundation, a music academy he founded in Central Europe, the Chairman of which was Vaslav Havel. For more than ten years, he has been a member of the board of the Shimon Peres Center for Peace.

He is also today the Vice Chairman of FACE – French American Cultural Exchange, an American foundation which, in partnership with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United Sates, plays an essential role in cultural and educational exchanges between the two countries.

Otherwise, in 2001, Alain Coblence conceived and created “andante.com”, a web site which remains today the first of all web sites dedicated to classical music.