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SOUNDTRACKS www.postmagazine.com 22 POST JULY/AUG 2025 THE DAY OF THE JACKAL Peacock's The Day of the Jackal stars Eddie Redmayne as a highly-elusive, lone assassin, who makes his living carrying out hits for high fees. Following his latest kill, the Jackal meets his match in a tenacious British intelligence officer (Lashana Lynch), who starts to track down him down in a cat-and- mouse chase across Europe. The show began streaming in November, with five episodes at its launch and weekly episodes dropping on Thursdays. The double-episode finale (Episodes 9 & 10) was released in December. German composer Volker Bertelmann created the show's original score and says working on a project that is based on such a well-known novel, and that has already been adapted multiple times, was both challenging and rewarding. "The story being set in the late '70s and early '80s made also the music ap- proach interesting," notes the composer, whose credits include Dune Prophecy and All Quiet on the Western Front. "Another major aspect working on this project was the chance to work with the wonderful director Brian Kirk. And of course, having Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch as main actors made the project even more appealing." Bertelmann saw the film version a long time ago, so his faint memory of it didn't affect his approach. "It allowed me to create something entirely new without any subconscious influence," he shares. "Having performed over a thousand improvisation live concerts, I've developed a deep sensitivity to new material and content. That's what I like about film scoring a lot — it constantly pushes you forward and tells you what's next." The composer's toolset includes a mix of prepared and non-prepared piano, strings, brass and percussion. "I used a lot of analogue synthesizers, like the Minimoog or the Jupiter 4," he shares. "I also have a large collection of microphones, preamps and effect pedals, all of which came into play. We used a lot of pitch-bending techniques, not only on classical instruments, but also on synths." He points to the series' first episode as one of the musical highlights that set the tone for the show. In it, the Jackal is in an apartment, quite a distance from his target, and assembling a weapon made from pieces of his suitcase. "The precision and calm he shows in that moment became a kind of blue- print for the Jackal theme," he reveals. "This blend of movement, with delicate, high-string textures, marked the beginning of the instrumentation concept for his character." Ultimately, Bertelmann composed around six hours of music. "It truly felt like the end of a long, beautiful and sometimes challenging jour- ney," he shares. "And yes, that's a moment worth celebrating." MATLOCK CBS's Matlock stars Emmy- and Oscar-winner Kathy Bates as Madeline "Matty" Matlock, a retired lawyer who saw success in her younger years and has now returned to the workforce in a covert effort to look into her daughter's death. The show also stars Skye P. Marshall as senior attorney Olympia, as well as her ex-husband, Julian (Jason Ritter), who is the son of the head of the law firm. Younger associates Billy (David Del Rio) and Sarah (Leah Lewis) find them- selves learning from Matty's tactics. Matlock premiered on CBS back in September, and streams on Paramount+. Zach Robinson is the composer for the series and says he always feels privi- leged to write music for a living. "I'm incredibly grateful to be a part of the Matlock team," says Robinson. "This is my second collaboration with our creator and showrunner Jennie Snyder Urman, and I'm honored she trusts me with bringing the music of her Matlock to life." Robinson never watched the original series, starring Andy Griffith, but was quite familiar with its theme song. "Jennie knew from the first pages of her pilot script the sound of our new Matlock was going to be different from the original," he shares. "We were going to have a new theme for our main character, Matty, and it was going to be the driving force of the score. Composing music for Cobra Kai and Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-man, I'm no stranger to famous IP, so I com- pletely understand the importance of immediately setting out to create your own identity." The score's theme was written very early in the process, even before the pilot had been shot. "It's pretty crazy, but my first idea was my last idea," the composer reveals. "Jennie and the team immediately fell in love with the new melody I composed, which was intended to be our main Matty theme. You'll hear it everywhere in the show. Getting that approved quickly was fantastic, and I'm still amazed at how modular a theme it is. It can easily switch from mystery, to sorrow, to excitement, to pensive." For Matlock's music, Robinson's inspiration comes from reading the script and any early cuts that he might be able to view. "You can write all the music you want, but you'll never know how it works tonally unless you start writing to picture," he explains. "I actually composed Matty's theme within a short musical suite I based off a couple of pages of the pilot script. It was pretty incredible that once they shot those pages and put the cut together, we dropped the suite into the edit and it worked extremely well for not having been written to the picture. Of course we needed to tailor the music to the scene exactly, but I think we were all surprised at how well the music worked almost immediately." Matlock has a few defining instruments to its sound. Robinson uses a lot of vibraphone, which gives a little bit of the retro flavor to the score. "I use a hammered dulcimer often as a layer for Matty's melody that pro- vides a bit of fun and mystery," he adds. "Other than that, there's a lot of piano, drums, guitar, orchestral strings and solo flutes...The dynamics of scoring this show are what make it really fun."