Hille Perl

Hille Perl is a German virtuoso of the viola da gamba known for her numerous recordings of both early and contemporary repertoire. She also plays the electric viol and has taught at the Hochschule für Künste Bremen since 2002. She was born in Bremen in 1965 to a musical family. Her father was an organist, cantor, and music teacher, and her three older siblings were also musicians. Perl became inspired to learn the viola da gamba when she was five years old after hearing Wieland Kuijken perform at a concert in Bremen. She soon began learning the treble viol, which she played throughout her childhood. When she was 18, she started learning the viola da gamba and studied with Pere Ros, Ingrid Stampa, and Niklas Trüstedt. Later, she attended the Academy of Early Music in Bremen, where she was a student of Sarah Cunningham and Jaap ter Linden. After she completed her schooling in 1990, she began collaborating with ensembles such as the Harp Consort, Lautten Compagney, and Circa 1500. She has also worked with her husband Lee Santana since 1984, and they appeared on several albums together in the ’90s, including Sainte Colombe: Retrouvé & Changé and Spanish Gypsies. Perl and Santana formed the trio Los Otros with Steve Player in 2001, and they released Tinto in 2003 and Aguirre in 2004. Perl began teaching at the University of the Arts, Bremen in 2002, and it was also around this time when she formed the Sirius Viols to experiment with different performance practices and concepts. The ensemble released the Christmas album In Darkness Let Me Dwell in 2011, and SiXXes from 2013 featured contemporary repertoire. Perl also began collaborating with her daughter Marthe, and in 2014 they released the album Elements. Santana joined the duo in 2015 on the album Born to Be Mild, which was Perl’s first recording with the electric viol. In a collaboration with Dorothee Mields, Perl released Händel in 2017, and she appeared on Bach: 6 Sonatas for Recorder, Harpsichord and Viola da Gamba BWV 1030-1035 in 2019 with Michala Petri and Mahan Esfahani. Since 2020, she’s released Ballads Within a Dream, A Day with Suzanne: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen, and Corellimania. She remains very active as an educator and a performer, and she lives with her family in Northern Germany. ~ RJ Lambert