Brad Mehldau was a man on a mission.

The jazz piano maestro, who has received as much acclaim as any artist working in the genre over the last 30 years, was looking to honor the memory and legacy of Elliott Smith, the late great indie-folk singer-songwriter who died in 2003 in Los Angeles.

This was personal for Mehldau, who was friends with Smith and even got the chance to accompany the Texas-born, Portland-raised talent to a number of gigs. Mehldau poured both his feelings and reverence for this artist into “Ride into the Sun,” an incredibly moving and beautiful song cycle built mainly from Smith’s own songbook.

The album came out last year on the Nonesuch label and received rave reviews. Yet, Mehldau never fully performed the “Ride Into the Sun” song cycle in concert until this past week, when the piano great and a large ensemble — including a number of artists who played on the record as well as a chamber orchestra of students from USC — revived the music of Smith during three highly anticipated shows in California.

Following dates in San Diego and Los Angeles, Mehldau and company hit the Paramount Theatre in Oakland for the finale on Saturday (Aug. 29). It was nothing short of an transcendent evening of music that, while rooted in jazz, seemed to properly evade any type of easy genre classification.

The cast for this SFJAZZ-promoted show was superb, featuring Mehldau, Nickel Creek mandolin sensation Chris Thile, drummer Matt Chamberlain (who has set the beat for everyone from Pearl Jam to Bob Dylan, and who worked Mehldau on a number or records), Folk Implosion’s John Davis on bass and Grammy-winning guitarist Blake Mills (whose credits include Norah Jones, Lana Del Rey and Weezer). Sharing the stage with that crew was the album’s producer, Dan Coleman, conducting the USC Thornton Chamber Virtuosi orchestra.

They’d all combine forces for what was an intensely moving tribute to Smith, an artist who seemingly had so much more to give to the world during what very much looked like a career that could go on for decades. Instead, he’d die at the age of 34 from stab wounds to the chest that coroners reportedly were unable to tell whether or not were self-inflected.

Yet, Smith definitely lives on through his music, which is being passed on from one generation to the next as well as being revitalized and reinterpreted by Mehldau and other musicians.

Taking the stage just minutes after the advertised 8 p.m. start time, while many people were still arriving at the venue, Mehldau sat down at his long black piano, in front of the large group of fellow musicians, and softly began to trace his way through Smith’s “Better Be Quiet Now.” He took the solo route at first on that devastatingly beautiful number — found on Smith’s “Figure 8” from 2000, which was the last of the artist’s albums released during his lifetime — before the orchestra and other musicians joined in such dramatically pleasing fashion.

Mehldau stuck to “Figure 8” for another gem — “Everything Means Nothing to Me” — mimicking the soft lyrical opening passage of the original recording quite closely on piano. He then called upon the rest of the large ensemble to lift the second half of the song to the skies in a way that also quite closely resembles Smith’s own take.

Yet, while Smith’s melodies kept rising to the forefront of the production, surely bringing to mind the singer-songwriter’s own voice, this evening was far from being about simply performing the music as it was originally intended to be played. Indeed, I’m not even sure that Mehldau — a first-tier improvisational jazz talent — could do something like that. And I’m really sure that he wouldn’t want to.

“We’re taking some little liberties with the music,” Mehldau explained to the crowd. “And I think that would be cool with Elliott.”

“Little liberties” is one way to put it. Another would be that these players took Smith’s lovely indie-pop/folk tunes and turned them into something else entirely, drawing from each of the talents in the band — as well as the chamber orchestra — to fashion an exciting mix of jazz, folk, pop, rock, bluegrass (thank you, Chris Thile) and classical as they ran through “Ride Into the Sun” song cycle in the exact track order as found on the record.

The music flowed seamlessly as the players turned through the pages of Smith’s songbook, adding a few of Mehldau’s own originals as well as a pair of covers — “Sunday” by Nick Drake (who Mehldau reportedly sees “as sort of Smith’s visionary godfather”), and “Thirteen” by Big Star (which Drake also covered). All of those songs are found on “Ride into the Sun.”

Mehldau closed the 90-minute main set with a triumphant take on the second part of the album’s title track — “Ride into the Sun: Conclusion” — which found the whole ensemble flexing its collective muscle in such glorious fashion. The pianist and his fellow musicians then returned to put a bow on the concert with an encore of “Son of Sam,” the sole Smith track to make the setlist that wasn’t also featured on “Ride into the Sun.”

It was a grand showing from one of jazz’s finest artists, honoring a indie-folk cult hero whose songs clearly deserve to be heard by many more listeners and in many different musical formats.

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Brad Mehldau setlist:

1. “Better Be Quiet Now”
2. “Everything Means Nothing to Me”
3. “Tomorrow Tomorrow”
4. “Sweet Adeline”
5. “Sweet Adeline Fantasy”
6. “Between the Bars”
7. “The White Lady Loves You More”
8. “Ride into the Sun: Part I”
9. “Thirteen”
10. “Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands”
11. “Somebody Cares, Somebody Understands”
12. “Southern Belle”
13. “Satellite”
14. “Color Bars”
15. “Sunday”
16. “Ride into the Sun: Conclusion”
Encore:
17. “Son of Sam”