Ylona Garcia reimagines a decade of music for two-part anniversary celebration

The Filipino-Australian artist revisits the songs that shaped her career, giving them new life through the perspective of the artist she has become.

Ten years into her professional music career, Ylona Garcia is returning to the Philippines for a two-part homecoming celebration that looks back on the songs and experiences that shaped her while pointing toward the artist she is still becoming.

The anniversary celebration begins on September 4 with Backyard Live: Ylona Garcia Spotlight, a Manila-exclusive performance at Backyard Warehouse Studio in Baesa, Quezon City. The invitation-only, intimate showcase will give a limited audience an early look at Ylona’s 10th-anniversary celebration in a setting centered on her music.

On September 5, the celebration opens to a wider audience with 10 Years of Ylona Garcia: Live at Venice Grand Canal Mall in McKinley Hill, beginning at 7:00 p.m.

For Ylona, the milestone is not simply a celebration of longevity. It is an opportunity to revisit the experiences—both difficult and transformative—that have shaped her as an artist.

“Celebrating 10 years in music is a reminder of how far I’ve come, but also of what really matters to me,” Ylona shares.

She describes her first five years in the industry as a period of learning—about her culture, the entertainment business, and her place within it. The years that followed brought considerably more personal challenges, including loss, difficult relationships, and the experience of being alone in another country for a second time.

Those experiences, however, ultimately reshaped her understanding of her craft.

“Artistically, though, those experiences taught me a lot about the difference between being a singer and being an artist,” she says.

That distinction sits at the heart of the anniversary project.

The two live performances will eventually become part of Ylona Garcia’s 10th Anniversary Live Album, a nine-track collection that reimagines songs from across her decade in music. Rather than simply recreating her earlier work, the project presents the songs through her current artistic perspective, incorporating elements of the sounds and influences that will also define her long-awaited second EP.

The project effectively creates a conversation between Ylona’s past and present: familiar songs are revisited, reshaped, and performed by an artist with a decade of experience behind her.

Ylona’s career has taken her far beyond the Philippines since she first emerged as a young pop artist with a devoted local following. She later signed with Paradise Rising, the Filipino-focused imprint of 88rising, before relocating to Los Angeles to pursue an international career.

Her growing global profile has included a performance at 88rising’s Head in the Clouds festival and the release of “Entertain Me,” created in partnership with Riot Games for VALORANT. Her work has also earned attention from international publications, including V Magazine.

Now, a decade after beginning her professional music journey, Ylona is coming home—not simply to celebrate where she started, but to reclaim the music that accompanied her along the way.

For the anniversary project, she is collaborating with Sony Music Entertainment to transform selections from her catalog into new arrangements and interpretations.

“This is my third time working with a music label, and collaboration truly means a lot to me,” Ylona explains. “So, through this project, being able to figure out what collaboration looks like between Sony Music Entertainment and me has actually been a very healing experience.”

The process has also challenged her to define what it means to bring her own artistic identity into a collaborative space.

“I’ve learned a lot about what it means to bring my vision into a room, listen to other people’s perspectives, and build something together without losing what I came there to say.”

That balance—between honoring the past and asserting a vision for the future—is what makes Ylona’s 10th anniversary more than a retrospective.

It is a reset.

The songs that once introduced audiences to Ylona Garcia now return with new context, shaped by a decade of growth, setbacks, reinvention, and discovery. And as she prepares to enter the next chapter of her career, she is bringing those songs with her—only this time, on her own terms.