It’s the Bunker Hill-billies

There’s something so enchanting about the longing and wonder of a lovely voice that it can sweep you away -- even from a surrounding as commanding as the new Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Late in her two-hour set Tuesday with the bluegrass-country band Union Station, Alison Krauss did just that.

The Illinois native injected such conviction and intimacy into a pair of ballads, “Looking in the Eyes of Love” and “When You Say Nothing at All,” that she made you forget about everything except the sweet, blissful tales of a restless heart finally finding a home.

The latter number, written by Don Schlitz and Paul Overstreet, has been a signature song for Krauss for almost a decade, but she still brings a haunting quality to the song’s key lines:

The touch of your hand says

You’ll catch me if ever I fall.

You say it best when you say

Nothing at all.

But even someone as special as this 14-time Grammy winner had a hard time much of the evening competing with the new hall itself, especially on a night when it was hosting its first pop attraction.

Krauss, on her own or as part of Union Station, clearly falls under the broad umbrella of pop -- a country artist whose recordings have spent some 90 weeks on the pop album charts.

So it was amusing to see her and Union Station listed under the highbrow banner of a world music series. It would have been more liberating if the concert had been listed as the pop event it was; if the powers that be really wanted to attack the formality surrounding concert halls around the country, they might have billed Tuesday as a night of “hillbilly” music.

The musicians clearly recognized they were trailblazers.

Before a solo midway through the concert, Union Station’s Jerry Douglas joked about how he felt pretty safe in saying he was the first dobro player to step on the stage.

But it took a while for the band to loosen up enough to crack jokes.

In fact, Krauss and the other five musicians seemed intimidated at first. She was so nervous on the opening tune, the caressing “Let Me Touch You for a While,” that she didn’t even seem to take a breath until she smiled in relief at the end.

It wasn’t until 20 minutes later when someone seated behind the stage shouted for the musicians to turn around that you felt the performers relax.

Krauss eventually became so comfortable on stage that she gave such rambling, but delightful, asides about songs or band members that they sometimes went on longer than the songs themselves. She couldn’t have been more “down home” if she had been on stage at the Grand Ole Opry.

As engaging as Krauss’ stories and vocals, Union Station itself is a world-class attraction, not just when backing her but also in virtuosic, high-speed instrumentals. Besides Douglas on dobro and Krauss on fiddle, it includes Dan Tyminski on guitar and mandolin, Ron Block on guitar and banjo, Barry Bales on upright bass and Larry Atamanuik on drums.

Tyminski -- the voice of George Clooney on “I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow” in the film “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” -- took over lead vocals occasionally, including on “Constant Sorrow,” and added a welcome dimension to the set.

Mostly, however, it was Krauss’ vocals that set the musical tone -- and she stuck pretty close to the same material she has been singing for years.

Krauss’ chief limitation is that she tends to be conservative in selection of songs. There’s an evocative edge to most of her material, but it pretty much deals with the same matters again and again. She doesn’t stretch herself in the way of, say, Emmylou Harris, another vocalist with an angelic purity.

Disney Hall’s sound system for concerts using microphones continues to be a work in progress, but there is apparently progress.

In response to previous complaints about echo, massive drapes were hung from the ceiling Tuesday.

From the seats directly in front of the stage, the music seemed crisp and lively, though it seemed to lose some of the separation between instruments and between voices when the band went into loud, vigorous passages.

There was a shout for “more vocals” from someone behind the stage and another from someone sitting in one of the side terrace seats during one of Krauss’ numbers. But you could hear most of Krauss’ sometimes breathless vocals well for most of the concert.

By the end of the evening, everything seemed in place and the audience gave the musicians a standing ovation. Pop music has joined the party at 1st and Grand.