Classical-guitar virtuoso Pepe Romero has yet to discover the fountain of youth, but he’s hit on the next-best thing: how to keep one’s hands limber and arthritis-free well into one’s eighth decade.

“The trick is ‘Never let them stop,’ ” the 72-year-old musician tells the Straight from Austin, Texas, where he’s leading workshops with a youth orchestra, holding master classes with older students, and playing a few concerts before returning to the West Coast for performances in Vancouver and Victoria.

That Romero loves teaching is clear. After laughing, he delivers a short lecture on the importance of proper preparation, which for him involves more than just studying the notes on the page. “Always, always warm up well,” he advises. “Warm up well, and feel. Every sound has to sound good, and has to feel good. I think if I were to completely lose my hearing, I would continue to play because I love the way it feels. And that sensation of the touch—and enjoyment of the touch—is what we have to cultivate in order to keep healthy hands.”

Romero admits that his own training “could not have been better”. As the second son of the adventurous guitarist Celedonio Romero, he grew up surrounded by music, and never looked elsewhere for his education. “It was just the absolutely most perfect situation to learn the guitar,” he reiterates, a hint of his Spanish accent creeping into his easy, colloquial English. “But I think that there are wonderful programs all over the world now, and the guitar is being recognized and loved the world over. There are excellent teachers everywhere, and I am very fortunate that many of the people that studied with me are in all different parts of the world, teaching the guitar and actually taking to the universities that which I imparted to them from my very personal and really fantastic training with my father.”

The concerts he’s giving in B.C. reflect that, both in the all-Spanish program he’s prepared and in the people he’s performing with. Several of the works continue the four-guitar format the Romeros pioneered in the 1960s, but rather than Maestro Celedonio and his three sons, it’s Maestro Pepe and his three students: Randy Pile, Robert Ward, and Alexander Dunn, professor of guitar at the University of Victoria. The program will include several duets and a venture into flamenco, but it’s Dunn’s quartet arrangements of music by the early-20th-century composer Joaquin Turina that Romero is most looking forward to playing.

“These were originally written for the Quartetto Aguilar, which was a lute quartet—but not lutes like the Elizabethan or baroque lute, the European lute,” the guitarist explains. “They were for the Spanish lute, which is actually closer to the mandolin.”

A new Romero family tradition will also be audible. Pepe Romero has an admirable collection of instruments from the world’s best luthiers, but he’ll most likely perform on one built by his son, Pepe Romero Jr.

“I’ve always been very involved and very interested in the creation of the guitar—how the different trees are put together to vibrate in just the perfect way with each other,” he says. “And now I’m very fortunate, because my son and my grandson are both phenomenal makers, and I get to watch that every single morning, every single day, because their workshop is in my house.

“The instruments that he produces are extraordinary, as you will hear,” Romero continues. “There will be, I believe, three, if not four, of them at the concert. But exactly which guitar I will use I’m not sure—because, you know, we guitar players, we don’t commit until it’s time to play.”

Pepe Romero and Friends play the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts on Saturday (October 22).