Nikolay Khrust, Ph.D. (1982, Moscow):
composer, sound designer, lecturer of Moscow Conservatory
He graduated from 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 performers. He was chosen for being a student of the Eighth International Young Composers Academy in the City of Tchaikovsky, the Perm Region (2018).
Khrust is a laureate of national and international contests, such as Open Space (2018, 1st prize), the Third and Fourth Jurgenson International Competitions, the Radio Orpheus Competition (1st prize). He was selected for the Sixth International Forum for Young Composers of the Ensemble Aleph and for the Eighth International Young Composers Academy in the City of Tchaikovsky as a student. Khrust’s music has been performed in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Venice (Venice Biennale), Paris, Berlin (Konzerthaus), Vienna, Amsterdam, Istanbul, Kyiv, Basel, Riga, Nice, Lyon, the Hague, Darmstadt, Rostov-on-Don, Kiel, Turin, Kraków, Nijmegen, Zürich, Thessaloniki, Appeldoorn, and other cities throughout the world 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, musicians of Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain (Fabrice Junger, Yi-Ping Yang) and MusikFabrik (Helen Bledsoe), Michele Marelli, and also by the Russian Philharmonic and Orpheus Radio symphony orchestras (Moscow), the Smolny Cathedral Chorus, etc.
Khrust was a composer-in-residence at the electroacoustic centres GRAME (Lyon) and CIRM (Nice).
Nikolay was a co-author of the collective musical theater project ‘Boxing Pushkin’ (directed by Andrea Boll); the performance was shown in five cities, including Amsterdam (Muziekgebouw) and the Hague (the Korzo Theater).
In 2013–2014, the Meyerhold Centre Moscow staged Creation of the World, a sound mystery by N. Anastasieva, N. Khrust and A. Koleychuk, where Khrust was both a composer and one of the scriptwriters. It was totally 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 and Dmitry Kawarga were 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).
Nikolay appears as an electronics performer, improviser and computer music designer: he is a co-founder of the Octopus improvisation ensemble and plays on various Moscow and St. Petersburg stages from clubs to the Composers’ Union and the Radio Kultura broadcasting. Khrust realized several world and Russian premieres (for ex., RP of Das Atmende Klarsein by Luigi Nono; Moscow Forum festival, 2011). As a computer music designer and performer, he worked with such musicians as conductor Theodor Currentzis, Studio for New Music Moscow, MCME etc. and appeared in Russia and abroad in this quality.
Khrust made an original sound design for museum expositions, theater and cross-art shows, movies (Grigory Shestakov’s movie The Silent Word with Khrust’s sound design obtained an award of the Third Savva Morozov Festival).
Khrust is an author of scholarly papers on extended techniques of playing musical instruments, contemporary music notation, phenomenology of music; among them there is his Ph.D. thesis Extended Techniques of Playing Instruments: an Experience of Classification’ (adviser is Professor Tatiana Tsaregradskaya, consultant is Professor Grigory Amosov).
Khrust also acts as a popularizer of contemporary music and curator: he makes reports, reads public lectures at different venues, such as Garage Museum for Contemporary Art, the Meyerhold Centre Moscow, Moscow Conservatory, Kyiv Music Academy, Science Festival (MSU), etc.
While working at the Interdepartmental Division for Contemporary Music, N. Khrust has developed the following curricular programs: Multimedia Art Forms (undergraduate), Scores Typesetting, Typesetting and Makeup Complex Scores (elective), The Twentieth-century Repertoire for Strings (in collaboration with Associate Professor Fyodor Sofronov), Tools of Electroacoustic Music (in collaboration with Alexey Nadjarov), The Twentieth-century Repertoire for Winds (in collaboration with a group of authors).
Nikolay Khrust is a member of the Composers’ Union of Russia, the Composers’ Union of Moscow and the Sound Plasticity Group, as well as is a resident of the Vsevolod Meyerhold Centre Moscow.
