{"id":16072,"date":"2020-05-21T09:50:17","date_gmt":"2020-05-21T16:50:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/hi-lo\/?p=30000010892"},"modified":"2020-05-28T02:00:37","modified_gmt":"2020-05-28T09:00:37","slug":"peter-fraszczynski-big-sun-frontman-dies-at-36","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/hi-lo\/peter-fraszczynski-big-sun-frontman-dies-at-36","title":{"rendered":"Peter Fraszczynski, Big Sun frontman, dies at 35"},"content":{"rendered":"

Musician Peter Fraszczynski, best known as the frontman of popular Long Beach psychedelic rock band, Big Sun, died recently. He was 35.<\/p>\n

Fraszczynski died in his hometown of Chicago of undisclosed causes, his friends say. Fraszczynski\u2019s family was unavailable to confirm the date of his death, but according to bandmates Blane Rogers and Chris Loeffler, posts noting Fraszczynski’s passing started to appear on his Facebook page Monday, May 18.<\/p>\n

\u201cI asked some people that had posted before me online and one person got back to me with, \u2018It\u2019s a surprise and a shock, we don\u2019t know what happened. The family asks for thoughts and prayers right now,\u2019\u201d said Matthew Hill, a longtime friend and frontman of folk-rock band Janie.<\/p>\n

Fraszczynski became a ubiquitous fixture in Long Beach\u2019s live music scene during the decade he spent in the city. If you didn\u2019t see him under stage lights, you might pass him smoking in front of Alex\u2019s Bar or spot his mop of brown hair in a mosh pit. In the years before his brainchild project, Big Sun, Fraszczynski performed in Long Beach bands Paper Flowers and Coyote, the latter named after a \u201ccolorful character\u201d he’d befriended in New Orleans before moving together to Long Beach, Hill said.<\/p>\n

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Peter Fraszczynski, center, with the Kansas City lineup of Big Sun. Photo courtesy Big Sun.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As a performer, Fraszczynski demanded your attention, whether for his prowess as a classically trained pianist, or his wild, mic-twirling, arm-flailing stage presence.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou could see the calories being burned off his fingers when he played,\u201d Hill remembered. \u201cHe would play old, ragtime songs on my piano, and if I had anything on top of the piano, they would start to shake. I had a picture of my mom; it fell off. There was a beer there once; it fell off, got everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

The tall, broad-shouldered musician was known to sit down at a piano, breeze through one of Beethoven\u2019s darkest pieces, then launch into some ragtime or Dixieland ditty. Strapped with a guitar, he might strum a Pixie\u2019s cover, then zone out on a psychedelic composition of his own.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a virtuoso,” Hill said. “A true virtuoso.\u201d<\/p>\n

Big Sun, the five-piece, genre-blending rock outfit that fused elements of psychedelic rock, groove, pop, stoner and hard rock, formed in Long Beach in 2014. Their debut album, \u201cSpacelift,\u201d was met with acclaim and garnered the band a strong local and regional following.<\/span><\/p>\n