Conducting

Gackstatter is currently the Symphonic Band Conductor at St. Louis community College—Meramec in St. Louis, and formerly the Director of Instrumental Music at Cowley College and Director of the Winfield Regional Symphony at Southwestern College. The Symphony won the Kansas Governor's Arts Award 2000; Gackstatter won the award in 2006. He was the interim Concert Band director at Wichita State University Fall 2006-Spring 2007

As a conductor, Gackstatter is a leader in innovative new works for band and orchestra. He has premiered two symphonies "Grasslands" and "Carl Sandburg's 'Prairie'" with the Paul Winter Consort and has done arrangements and debut symphonic performances of Three Dog Night, Kansas, John McCutcheon, John Gorka, Barbara Higbie, Tom Chapin and Noah benShea. His bands have performed at major state music conventions as well as performances at Kansas State and Wichita State Universities. He has also premiered the filmscores to "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "The Great Escape" both by composer Elmer Berstein.

He has also been clinician and guest conductor for many bands and orchestras in Kansas Texas, and Oklahoma.