The first cheering at Thursday night’s Pops concert was for the Steelers, one championship team to another.

The musicians all waved Terrible Towels after Marvin Hamlisch, wearing a big No. 7 on his jersey, led the orchestra and audience in “Here We Go Steelers” as videocameras recorded the scene for projection on the Jumbotron screen at Heinz Field on Sunday.

The Pops concert itself was a tribute to Irving Berlin, the Russian immigrant songwriter who was born in 1888 and lived until 1989. He was active during a golden age of American song before World War II, in the company of Jerome Kern and George Gershwin.

Hamlisch offered a rewarding survey of Berlin’s wide compositional range that successfully included many styles that have taken their turns in the changing fashions of American music. Hamlisch, a celebrated composer in his own right, quoted Kern putting it all in perspective: “Irving Berlin has no place in American music; he is American music.”

The show opened out of the darkness, with Hamlisch in top solo form at the piano. Exuberance fully balanced introspection in his playing, especially in the musical exchanges with brass in Alexander’s Ragtime Band.

Both featured singers were wonderful, in duets as well as solos. In “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better” Doug LaBrecque had the higher note, Debbie Gravitte the longer note.

Gravitte, currently in Chicago on Broadway, won a Tony for her performance in Jerome Robbins’ "Broadway," and was a hoot in the too rarely heard "Mr. Monotony." LaBrecque is a strong singer who showed his sweetness in "I Want to Go Back to Michigan," a nostalgic view of farm life.

Tap dancer Eugene Fleming added an extra dimension in “Let Yourself Go,” acting perfectly nerdy and stiff at the start before strutting his stuff.

Hamlisch featured a five-piece saxophone section in the medley of jazzy music, with an excellent solo from Rick Mansfield. The symphony’s trumpets were stylistically right on in this repertoire, and beautifully clean. So too was the plucked solo by rhythm section bassist Jeff Grubbs. Drum set was in the capable hands of Andy Reamer.

The sing-along medley might have gone better if Hamlisch had played through each tune before everyone joined in, and the arrangement of the finale featuring an excellent All-Star Chorus drawn from 11 regional colleges and universities needs to be tweaked to be a properly stronger finish.