Hille Perl is a Ger­man vir­tu­oso per­former of the vi­ola da gamba and lirone. She is con­sidered to be one of the world's finest vi­ola da gamba play­ers, spe­cial­iz­ing in solo and en­semble mu­sic of the 17^th and 18^th cen­tur­ies. She has a par­tic­u­lar in­terest in French Baroque rep­er­toire for sev­en-string bass vi­ola da gamba, which she plays with an al­most vo­cal, yet re­fined tone. She also per­forms Span­ish, Itali­an and Ger­man rep­er­toire and has re­leased sev­er­al CDs.

This films por­trays Hille Perl who lives with her hus­band Lee Santana, who plays the lute, the­orbo, chi­tar­rone, and baroque gui­tar and is her long-time en­semble part­ner in an old farm­house in Lower Sax­ony sur­roun­ded by hordes of horses, cats, roost­ers and a Bernese moun­tain dog. Hille’s daugh­er, Marthe Perl is a vi­ol play­er too and stud­ies to­geth­er with her.

The main rep­er­toire in this film em­bod­ies the works of Jo­hann Hieronymus Kaps­ber­ger. To­geth­er with the trio “Los Otros“ [The Oth­ers] Hille Perl and Lee Santana per­form an­cient mu­sic com­bined with dance-parts by Steve Play­ers in Bolzano, Italy.

In Freiburg, in Bre­is­gau, Ger­many, Hille Perl re­cords to­geth­er with the Freiburg Baroque Or­ches­tra works by Graun and Tele­mann. The free­dom of phras­ing and the egal­it­ari­an char­ac­ter­ist­ics of an­cient mu­sic are both qual­it­ies that cor­res­pond to Hille Perl’s per­son­al­ity. Like many oth­er in­stru­ments of an­cient mu­sic the vi­ola da gamba with its freedoms is equal to oth­er in­stru­ments. But this also means that every­body needs to know when to sub­or­din­ate the in­di­vidu­al in­stru­ment to cre­ate a com­plete acous­tic pic­ture.