Steve Allen Returns to CSUN : Music: The audience will get to see another side of the versatile entertainer when he performs with the university’s jazz band.

Joel Leach, director of Cal State Northridge’s jazz band, had one of those typical Los Angeles experiences at the airport last year. He was waiting for a flight out of Burbank when he recognized Steve Allen in the crowd.

A longtime fan of Allen’s, Leach introduced himself.

“We started talking,” he said. “It went well.”

Then the music professor took this celebrity sighting a step further.

“I didn’t miss the opportunity to ask him if he might consider performing with the band,” Leach recalled. “He said yes. It was simple.”

Allen, indeed, appeared at CSUN for a short concert in May. He enjoyed the experience enough that he will make a lengthier return engagement at 8 p.m. Sunday in the university’s Campus Theater.

“Over the course of my life, I’ve written an enormous volume of jazz music,” said Allen, who has recorded about 40 albums but is probably better known as the former host of “What’s My Line” and his own talk show. Allen has also written 35 books.

“Composers always like to have their music performed just as painters like to have their paintings exhibited and writers like to have their words published,” he said, calling the CSUN performance “another opportunity to have my music performed.”

The evening promises to be slightly irreverent. Conducting and playing piano from time to time, Allen will select at random from eight compositions he has given the band to learn. The student musicians have been instructed to “bring noisemakers and shout comments” during the performance, Leach said.

The students will learn new music as well as getting the chance to watch a professional handle the audience, Leach said.

“What an entertainer really has to do is control the room,” the band director said, explaining that Allen often chats and jokes with the crowd during his concerts. “The band will have to be alert to Steve, catch his moves and his language.

“If he says something about being down in Texas, the pianist has to play something Texas,” Leach said. “If Steve speaks French, the pianist has to come up with a French tune.”

Said Allen: “I’ll be consciously teaching them no such thing. But they may observe what I do.”

The CSUN Jazz Band has previously performed with such noted musicians as Louie Bellson and Tommy Newsom. The band has won nine consecutive first-place awards at UC Berkeley’s Pacific Coast Collegiate Jazz Festival as well as having toured Japan, Australia and Scandinavia.

Steve Allen performs with the CSUN Jazz Band at 8 p.m. Sunday in the Campus Theater. CSUN is at 1811 Nordhoff St., Northridge. Admission $6, $3 for students and seniors. Call (818) 885-3180.