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 the Moscow Art Prize (2021; the first case of awarding the prize for music work), 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 one of the winners of Russian Composers Union’s ‘Notes and Quotes’ project and got a special commission from Vacuum Quartet in the frameworks of this project (2022). Khrust was elected for 6th International Forum for Young Composers of Ensemble Aleph and for VIII International young Composers Academy in Tchaikovski city as a student. 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, de Ereprijs, Reconsil Wien, Airborne Extended, Aleph, Nostri Temporis Kyiv, UMS-n-JIP, Xenia Quartet, Vacuum Quartet, KlangNetz Berlin, eNsemble Pro Arte, 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), Smolny Cathedral Choire etc. Khrust’s music was recorded by ‘Firma Melodiya’ and broadcasted by Orfeus Radio and Radio Kultura. Khrust was a composer in residence in electroacoustic centres GRAME (Lyon) and CIRM (Nice).

Nikolai 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. ‘Garage’ Museum commissioned Khrust a sound-light ‘eternal’ algorithmic composition for Vyacheslav Koleychuk’s ‘Atom’ public installation, which was being continuously exposed in Gorky Park Moscow during 5 months (2018; as a substitution of lost soundtrack made by Leon Theremin).

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). Nikolai was a co-author of 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).

Nikolai appears as an electronics performer, improviser and computer music designer. He improvised on various stages of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kyiv: from clubs to Moscow House of Composers. Khrust found King Bee electronic-instrumental ensemble, which came out on ‘Five Nights’ festival in December 2021; and he found Octopus improvisation ensemble (critic Dmitri Ukhov dedicated the whole episode of his ‘Home Music’ program on Radio Kultura broadcasting to the ensemble and his musicians). Part of both ensembles members moved from Russia in 2022 as well. 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 conductors as Vladimir Yurovski, Theodor Currentzis, Igor Dronov, Feodor Ledneov, Filipp Chizhevski, Maxim Yemelyanychev, Valentin Uryupin, with such ensembles as 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 (a movie ‘The Silent Word’ by Gr. Shestakov with Khrust’s sound design got prize of III Savva Morozov Festival).

Khrust is an author of scientific papers on extended techniques of playing musical instruments, contemporary notation, musical phenomenology; 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).

Khrust 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 of Moscow State University, Dovzhenko Centre Kyiv etc. He was an artistic director of ‘School- Laboratory for Contemporary Music’ where children and teenagers from various regions of Russian study contemporary music and write instrumental and electronic works.

Khrust didn’t accept the invasion to Ukraine started in 2022 and moved from Russia to France.

Residency project:

The project is to compose a musical composition for violin, oud and live electronics of at least 8 minutes duration specially for oudist and violinist Basem Al-Ashkar. The result of the work will be a new work that can be widely performed in many concert halls, expanding the repertoire not only of the violin, but also of the oud, an instrument that is considered “non-academic”.