He continued studying with Davis while a piano major at the University of North Texas where he studied with Larry Walz. After moving to Los Angeles, he studied film scoring at UCLA with Academy Award nominated composer Walter Scharff.
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. He performed a different program each month featuring classical standards along with his new symphonies and concertos. He ended each concert with Liszt's La Campanella or the second Hungarian Rhapsody.
The LA Weekly commented, "He drove his teachers batty, the famed Ivan Davis among them, with fiendishly difficult arrangements of works already known as finger twisters. His version of Liszt's 'La Campanella' etude is said to be impossible."
The Venice Beach concerts received world wide press coverage. He was invited to perform as the musical guest on a Canadian television show, CBC’s Pilot One. He made his network television debut in the United States on CBS's The Pat Sajak Show and was the subject of eight minutes of coverage on CNN.
Virgin Records offered him a recording contract. His album, Streetwise, was released in March, 1991 with much fanfare which included a televised performance of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 on the Joan Rivers Show. The label president referred to Streetwise as a "hit out of the box'' as it made it on to the rock sales charts in many of America's retail chains in its opening weeks. Jay Leno invited Kastle to start touring with him as his opening act that summer. Kastle made a guest appearance with Leno on NBC's The Tonight Show. By the fall of 1991 Cleveland Scene Magazine reported, "Streetwise became the biggest selling album on Virgin Classics."
In 1992, Kastle toured as the opening act for both comedians Jay Leno and the late George Carlin. Virgin sent Kastle to London to record his fifth concerto with the Philharmonia Orchestra. The piece is also known as the "Royce Concerto." Entertainment Tonight did a profile on Kastle while the album was being recorded. Soon after the recording was finished, Richard Brandson sold his record label to EMI. European executives closed the New York offices, run by Virgin Classics label president Rogher Holdredge, while keeping Kastle tied to his contract for years which prevented him from releasing the Royce Concerto album or moving to another label.
In 1995, Leno invited Kastle to open for him in a 17,000 seat arena filled to capacity in Champagne, Illinois. This was the largest live audience Kastle ever performed for. He played mostly original compositions along with works by Beethoven and Liszt.
In 1997, the Royce Concerto was released by an independent label. Kastle promoted the album performing piano recitals on college campuses and as Jay Leno's opening act in Las Vegas.
Richard Kastle
He began composing his Symphony #6 in 2001. The piece was created in Venice, Italy. Titled Symphony Venezia, it is far more complex than any of his other works, It wasn't completed until 2006 and involved many all night composition sessions in Piazza San Marco.
Kastle draws inspiration for his compositions by traveling to exotic places like Bora Bora. His Piano Concerto #8 was finished at the Four Seasons in the Maldives and premiered at Symphony Space in New York City in 2003 with Kastle at the piano. He conducted the orchestra while playing the piece, a method that was far more common in Mozart's era.
CBS News interviewed him in 2012 about his Titanic Symphony as part of the coverage of the 100th anniversary of the Titanic's sinking. Dic Press published a print biography about Richard Kastle that year. The book was edited by Dismas Renald Apostolos.
He is currently practicing for upcoming piano recitals and creating his Piano Concerto #9, which will be his grandest concerto. The first two movements are more orchestral and symphonic in nature like Beethoven's concertos. The third movement is more Lisztian with virtuoso fireworks that are more challenging than the hardest technique in any of Kastle's other compositions.
