Nikolaï Khrust (1982, Moscow) is a composer, sound designer, Ph. D., associate professor of Moscow Conservatory. He graduated Moscow Conservatory and its post graduate classes as a composer (professor Vladimir Tarnopolski). Khrust attended Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt (twice), Impuls courses in Graz and many master-classes with well-known composers (such as Beat Furrer and Georg Friedrich Haas) and interpreters. He was chosen for being student of VIII International Young Composers Academy in Tchaikovsky-city (2018).

Khrust is a laureate of international and All-Russian contests, such as ‘Open Space’ (2018, I prize), III and IV Jurgenson International Competition, Radio Orpheus Competition (I prize). He was elected for 6th International Forum for Young Composers of Ensemble Aleph.
Khrust’s music has been performed in Moscow, S.-Petersburg, Venice (Venice Biennale), Paris, Berlin (Konzerthaus), Vienna, Amsterdam, Istanbul, Kiev, Basel, Riga, Nice, Lyon, the Hague, Darmstadt, Rostov-on-Don, Kiel, Turin, Krakow, Nijmegen, Zürich, Thessaloniki, Appeldoorn and other world cities by such ensembles as Studio for New Music Moscow, MCME, eNsemble Pro Arte, de Ereprijs, Reconsil, Aleph, Nostri Temporis, UMS-n-JIP, Xenia Quartet, KlangNetz, Instead Ensemble, musicians of Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain (Fabrice Junger, Yi-Ping Yang) and MusikFabrik (Helen Bledsoe), Michele Marelli, and also by Russian Philharmonic and Orpheus Radio symphony orchestras (Moscow), Rossiya Folk Instruments Ensemble, Smolny Cathedral Choire etc.

Khrust was a composer in residence in electroacoustic centres GRAME (Lyon) and CIRM (Nice). He co-authored the collective musical theater project ‘Boxing Pushkin’ (director Andrea Boll); the performance is been shown in five cities including Amsterdam (Muziekgebouw) and the Hague (Korzo theater).

In 2013–2014 years Meyerhold Centre Moscow staged ‘Creation of the World’, sound mystery by N. Anastasieva, N. Khrust and A. Koleychuk, where Khrust was an author of music and a co-author of script. Totally it has been shown eight times (choreography by M. Nagaychuk El’Abdallah, art objects by V. Koleychuk).

Nikolay Khrust is an author and co-author of multimedia and multi-art projects. Sound installations made by Khrust in collaboration with Anna Koleychuk, Vyacheslav Koleychuk, Dmitry Kawarga have been presented in Moscow, Zagreb, Heidelberg, Granada, Linz (the last work is a sound-light ‘eternal’ algorithmic composition commissioned by ‘Garage’ Museum for Vyacheslav Koleychuk’s ‘Atom’ public installation, exposed in Moscow Gorky Park during 4 months in 2018).
Nikolay appears as an electronics performer, improviser and computer music designer: he is a co-founder of Octopus improvisation ensemble and plays on various Moscow and S.-Petersburg stages from clubs to Composers’ Union. One ‘Home music’ broadcasting by Dmitry Ukhov’s on Radio Kultura was dedicated to Octopus ensemble . Khrust realized several world and Russian premieres (for ex. RP of ‘Das Atmende Klarsein’ by Luigi Nono [Moscow Forum festival, 2011], WP of ‘Enamored Devil’, an opera by Alexander Wustin [MMT, 2019]). As a computer music designer and performer he worked with such conductors as Theodor Currentzis, Vladimir Jurowski, Igor Dronov, Feodor Lednyov, Philipp Chizhevski, Maxim Yemelyanychev and with such ensembles as Studio for New Music Moscow, MCME etc. and appeared in Russia and abroad in this quality.

Khrust made original sound designs for museum expositions, theater and cross-art shows, movies (a movie ‘The Silent Word’ by Gr. Shestakov with Khrust’s sound design got prize of III Savva Morozov Festival). He is an author of scientific papers on extended techniques of playing musical instruments, contemporary notation, phenomenology of music; among them there is his Ph. D. thesis ‘Extended techniques of playing instruments: the experience of classification’ (adviser is professor Tatiana Tsaregradskaya, consultant is professor Grigory Amosov). He also acts as a popularizer of contemporary music and curator: he makes reports, reads public lectures in different venues such as ‘Garage’ Museum for Contemporary Art, Meyerhold Centre Moscow, Moscow Conservatory, Kyiv Music Academy, Science Festival (MSU) etc.

Nikolay Khrust is a member of Russian Composers Union, Union of Moscow Composers and Sound Plasticity Group, resident of Vs. Meyerhold Centre Moscow.