SAN DIEGO — Bob Dylan took to the stage Sunday night at the Rady Shell at Jacobs Park only 12 days after Paul Simon concluded his own sold-out concert at the same San Diego venue with “The Sound of Silence.”

That song’s telltale opening line, “Hello darkness, my old friend,” also served as a credo for Dylan, who wore a black hoodie and embraced the silence and the darkness with a quietly mesmerizing, low-volume performance that reveled in nuance. The stage was so dimly lit he and his four accompanists resembled the house band at an FBI Witness Protection gathering.

True to form, Dylan did not introduce any songs or address the audience. And with so many songs as richly evocative and filled with multitudes of meaning to his credit, why should he?

His carefully calculated decision to focus solely on the music by eschewing even a hint of showbiz convention is nothing new for this storied singer-songwriter. He has been defying expectations since several decades before the 1995 birth of actor Timothée Chalamet, who earned a 2025 Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Dylan in the hit biopic “A Complete Unknown.”

Dylan himself was far from unknown when he made his area concert debut in early 1964 at SDSU’s Peterson Gym, where this already singular troubadour — then just 21 — was the opening act for his then-girlfriend, Joan Baez.

The gym was renovated in 2014. Baez completed her “Fare Thee Well” farewell tour in 2019. The proudly unretiring Dylan, like Baez, is now 85 and faring very well, thank you. His sold-out Sunday-night concert was a masterclass in the art of confounding his audience’s expectations by remaining true to his ever-restless artistic muse.

And that is precisely what Dylan did throughout his 16-song set at The Shell. He performed for a capacity audience of 7,400 following spirited opening sets by the John Doe Folk Trio and Lucinda Williams.

For Dylan’s performance, the stage was backlit with no spotlights. The live video footage of the concert was shot from a sufficient distance to make him almost seem like an apparition. With a half-moon hovering in the sky, the haunting quality of “Man in the Long Black Coat,” “Black Rider” and the epic “Crossing the Rubicon” was further enhanced by the shadowy stage presentation.

Cellphone photos were explicitly prohibited, if not entirely enforced (as evidenced by some of the dark, grainy photos of the concert that subsequently appeared on social media). Of course, even if cellphone photos had been allowed, the lack of lighting and Dylan’s position behind his electric piano about 20 feet back from the lip of the stage would have rendered any images all but useless. And that was the point.

A bare-bones production has been Dylan’s modus operandi since he began what has been dubbed his “never-ending tour” 38 years ago this month. Ditto his penchant for reinventing his songs on a nightly basis — sometimes subtly, sometimes overtly — the better to avoid becoming a nostalgia-fueled human jukebox devoid of soul and any purpose beyond cashing in on yesteryear.

If Sunday’s concert was not quite as revelatory as Dylan’s concert here last May with Willie Nelson, it was just as satisfying and even more surprising.

Embracing constant creative reinvention enables Dylan to keep himself engaged by adding new twists and turns at will, as he alters the arrangements, style and vocal phrasing in his best known and more obscure numbers alike. His singing at The Shell was a masterclass in understatement and emotional depth. He scored equally well whether diving into the blues on “Goodbye Jimmy Reed” or gently crooning the exquisite “Every Grain of Sand.”

Dylan’s opening number, “To Be Alone With You,” was spare, chilling and far removed from the jaunty 1969 version he recorded on his 1969 album, “Nashville Skyline.” His rendition of “All Along the Watchtower” — the cryptic 1967 classic Dylan has since performed more than any other song in his vast repertoire — was recast with an airy keyboard motif that evoked, of all things, Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams.”

Several songs began or ended with a lurch. This was in part because Dylan has long favored spontaneity and passion over predictability and dull precision, and because jazz guitar great Julian Lage — who only replaced Bob Lancino last Wednesday — is still learning Dylan’s vast repertoire and was reading from sheet music Sunday.

Such malleability, which has fueled Dylan’s concerts for decades, mystifies and dismays casual fans as much as it delights longtime devotees.

The former want to hear his classics performed as close as possible to their original recorded versions, which has long been anathema to this Nobel Prize-winning bard of song. The latter is eager to hear what new spin Dylan will put on any (and every) song each night. His propensity to spin, not pander, was evident at The Shell and clearly did not please all the attendees.

Or, as one disgruntled concertgoer wrote on Facebook: “So disappointing! He sounded great and the band was great, but did not sing even one song anyone would recognize! At least 20% of the audience walked out! He wore a hoodie and the jumbotron never showed him or the band close enough to see his face. He didn’t address the audience once — no hello or goodbye! Waste of an expensive ticket and costly parking!”

One can only wonder what this concertgoer would have thought of “When I Paint My Masterpiece” — had they recognized it — morphing into a rumba Sunday, after opening with the melody from Irving Berlin’s 1930 chestnut, “Putting on the Ritz.”

The ever-inscrutable Dylan’s shape-shifting approach evinced added irony when he slyly sang: “Someday, everything is gonna be smooth like a rhapsody / When I paint my masterpiece.”

Happily, at 85, Bob Dylan shows every sign of still having another masterpiece or three in him to create, no matter how bright or dim the lighting may be. When he does, expect him to shine brightly anew — as befits a relentlessly devoted artist who long ago realized creativity always trumps compromise, and that a true masterpiece remains a work in constant progress.

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