In the late 1980's, Kastle had a big impact on the music scene in Venice Beach, California, where he gained notoriety as the rebel of classical music, attracting surfers and punkers to monthly piano recitals. The LA Times said, "He's part Peter Pan, refusing to grow up and act like a concert pianist." He performed a different program each month featuring classical standards along with his new symphonies and concertos. In addition to local coverage, the Venice Beach concerts were covered by international magazines in Europe and the Middle East. In 1989, Kastle was invited to perform as the musical guest on CBC’s Pilot One, the Canadian version of Saturday Night Live. He made his network television debut on CBS's The Pat Sajak Show and was profiled by CNN and Entertainment Tonight.
Virgin Records offered him a recording contract in 1991. He promoted Streetwise, his debut release on NBC's the Tonight Show and toured as opening acts for Jay Leno and the late George Carlin. While touring with Leno in October of 1991, Cleveland Scene Magazine reported that, "As things turned out, Streetwise became the biggest selling album on Virgin Classics." In 1992, Virgin recorded his Royce Concerto with the Philharmonia Orchestra in London. EMI bought Virgin later that year and repeatedly delayed the release until finally cancelling it. The project was picked up by an independent label in 1997.
1999 - conducted the premiere of his Titanic Symphony and Symphony #5 at Lincoln Center.
2001 - began composing his sixth symphony, which required him to make several trips to Venice, Italy, where he created the sketches.
2002 - completed the Piano Concerto #8 on the island of Kuda Hura in the Maldives.
2003 - performed the new concerto at Symphony Space in New York following Mozarts performance style where the conductor leads the orchestra from the piano while playing their own concerto.
2004 - returned to Venice for a short time to resume work on Symphony Venizia.
2005 - the conductor's score of Symphony Venezia is completed.
2007 - began work on his ninth piano concerto which features a finale that uses a theme sung at soccer stadiums and baseball games. To date, the work is far from complete, but Kastle has prepared the finale as a piece for piano without orchestra. The ending has been constructed to be un-playable as it features technique that is more challenging than anything in the virtuoso repertiore. The challenge involves a dazzling display of several hundred octaves and about five times as many opposite hand direction movements as Liszt wrote at the end of his Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2.
His hobby is making claymation films and doing the voices for the cartoon characters. "The Magic Chicken," an allegory on arts education was premiered at the Thalia Theatre in NY. It features a chicken and a monkey playing the piano. His newest film, "The Great Salanini" was produced in 2005. It had screenings at the AMC Theaters in Coconut Grove and the East Village Cinema in New York. He won a Best Director Award for Animation at the New York Independent Film and Video Festival.
